The 102-year-old Globe Theater downtown came back to life last night after a renovation that city officials hope will bring nightlife back to Broadway. Councilmember José Huizar told the crowd gathered for the ribbon-cutting that owner Erik Chol performed much of the restoration work himself by climbing inside a cherry picker and “putting in sweat equity to make it just right.” The event was co-hosted by the Los Angeles Historic Theater Foundation.

Originally opened as an elegant playhouse called the Morosco, the space was designed by Morgan, Walls, and Clements – the architectural firm that would go on to design the Mayan, Wiltern, and El Capitan theaters. The vast hall remained a playhouse for 17 years, became a newsreel theater during the depression, and showed movies from 1941-1986. A swap meet conversion after that did some major aesthetic damage that Chol’s team has turned around nicely.

Last night’s opening was all bottle service and cirque performers, but the theater’s website promises “Artists, actors, and acrobats” in the “magical space” which will also be available to rent for “high-end clubbing, fashion shows, filming, corporate/private events, live concerts, birthdays, and charity events.”

So who knows what event you’ll have to cross the velvet rope for? If you get a chance to visit, it is a beautiful space that’s been greatly improved. Hopefully the next grand opening on Broadway will be for Clifton’s Cafeteria.

Fred Kogen—physician, professional mohel (Google it), and bumper sticker-donning NRA member—describes Bullets & Bagels as a “post-denominational, gender neutral, egalitarian, fun-loving, all-embracing, mildly politically incorrect, noshing, networking, and shooting club.” Every two months, the 66 member-strong organization meets at a range in the Greater L.A. Area to grub on some lox, kibitz with like-minded mensches, and test their accuracy with guns like the Israeli-made IWI US Tavor SAR close-quarters combat rifle (they’re even raffling one off at their next event).

If this seems like an unlikely combination of activities, that’s because it is: The environment crafted by Kogen offers members a purely unique experience. He jokingly reassures us that the group is neither full of doomsday preppers nor militant nutjobs arming themselves for a proxy war. They’re just a group of Jews (and Gentiles—about a quarter of their membership is non-Jewish) trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights and eat some good food in the process.

“I wanted more of a social environment, and one that touched on a traditional element of Jewish culture: eating,” he said. “Jews like to talk, they like to nosh and kibitz, so that’s how we settled on Bullets & Bagels.”

Aside from noshing, kibitzing, and shooting, the club also features guest speakers from the Jewish community. At recent gatherings they’ve had a rabbi lecture on how guns fit into the teachings of the Torah (he confirmed they indeed fit well), and a Jewish ex-Navy SEAL speak about his experience with guns in military service. But, Kogen says, the noshing goes on unabated throughout the whole process—and with the spreads they have, how could it not?

One of the fully-loaded sandwiches from Cortina’s

Photo courtesy Facebook/Bullets & Bagels

“If it’s breakfast we’ve got lox and bagels from Katella deli in Anaheim, and for some of our bigger events on Sundays, we get a mess of sandwiches from Cortina’s—it’s this really great italian deli in Anaheim,” he said. “And don’t worry, we’ve always got some kosher food for our more orthodox members.”

The club’s next event will be held in conjunction with Israel Weapons Industries (IWI)—who is donating the Tavor rifle being auctioned off with all proceeds going towards the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF)—on August 23 at the Raahauges Range in Corona. Members pay $50 for the event and non-members $80, which includes basic shooting instruction and assistance from NRA-certified teachers. You can sign up here.

Kogen is trying to dramatically increase club membership numbers over the next year or so, and he eventually sees Bullets & Bagels as a nationwide network of shooting and noshing enthusiasts. He seems to have found a solid formula, too.

“If you put out good food, people will come,” he said. Truer words were never spoken.

After 10 years of seafood excellence at Providence, two Michelin stars, several James Beard nominations, amazing reviews—not to mention hitting every best restaurant list imaginable—Michael Cimarusti has reason to celebrate. In honor of such an auspicious anniversary, he and managing partner Donato Poto are welcoming some pals from across the country for a special guest chef series, which kicks off with Suzanne Goin and San Francisco’s Dominique Crenn on August 18.

Goin, of course, is a hometown hero as co-owner and chef of Lucques,A.O.C., Tavern and the Larders. Crenn is a Michelin-star winning chef of Atelier Crenn and the forthcoming Petit Crenn in San Francisco. The two powerhouses will collaborate on the seven-course menu with Cimarusti for one very memorable dinner. Think: melon and sea urchin with summer herb sorbet; barely cooked Santa Barbara spot prawns with Osetra caviar and shellfish nage; grilled striped bass with German potatoes; and braised short ribs with black olive chimichurri. Here’s the full menu.

If you can’t make this one, chefs Michael Tusk (San Francisco’s Quince) and Mark Vetri (Philadelphia’s Vetri) will be on deck for Monday, September 14; and Mauro Colagreco (Mirazur Restaurant in Menton, France) and David Kinch (Manresa) on Tuesday, October 6.

Tickets for each dinner are $225 per person (tax, gratuity and beverages excluded). Call 323-460-4170 for reservations.

Domaine du Castelnau Viognier Pays D’Oc 2014 FranceAs per our usual, we are starting you off with a deliciously crisp white wine this upcoming Barnsdall. One of my favorite grapes, Viognier, is indigenous to southern France where this wine is made. It is always beautifully aromatic and full of floral hints. Pair this bad boy with a fresh arugula salad with a little sea salt, olive oil, lemon and a bit shredded cheese (for good measure) and it’s smooth sailing.

La Closerie des Lys “Les Fruitieres” Rosé Pays D’Oc 2014 FranceOne of our favorite easy breezy rosés every year, Closerie is located in the Langudoc region of Southern France and is a blend of three native Southern French grapes: Syrah, Grenache, and Cinsault. It is light and refreshing on the palate with hints of strawberries and cherries—yet it is completely dry. Pair with a nice cold cup of gazpacho!

Argento Bonarda Mendoza 2012 ArgentinaBonarda (also known as Charbono in California) is a lesser known grape that is starting to pick up steam in Argentina. Like its bigger brother Malbec, these wines tend to be full-bodied and juicy. This one is grown in Mendoza, the Napa Valley of Argentina, and has hints of raspberry and earth. Bust out the lamb chops and let this vino sing.

Siete Cuchillos Malbec Mendoza 2012 ArgentinaIt looks like we got a little French vs. Argentina action going here, with the first two wines coming from the Languedoc in Southern France and these last two reds repping hard from Mendoza, Argentina. The last but not least is 100% Malbec and is a nice big structured red. Perfect companion for a grilled flatiron steak.

For the next two weeks, Pasadena’s Gamble House—the Craftsman masterpiece designed by brothers Charles and Henry Greene—is opening its doors extra wide for an extensive “Upstairs Downstairs” tour. In addition to covering all the same ground as the regular tour, this one takes guests through the rarely seen basement and servants quarters (rarely seen, that is, unless you’re one of the two lucky USC architecture students who live there during the school year). “Upstairs Downstairs” focuses less on the architecture and more on the personal history of the Gamble family and their servants (hence the reference to the 1970s TV show of the same name).

On the tour you’ll see the room of the family’s beloved Croatian cook, Ljuba Sirolla, who baked cookies for college-bound Gamble boys. In Sydney Gamble’s room, you’ll learn about the book he wrote there—Peking: a Social Survey, based on his many travels in China—and his mother Mary’s pride at seeing it on the shelves of Vroman’s. You’ll hear of Clarence Gamble’s fondness for rollerskating and his role as unwitting chronicler of valuable family history.

The tour is rife with details of the Gamble family’s personal matters—details recently uncovered by Gamble House curator Anne Malleck in a a treasure trove of letters, journals, and photographs in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard.

“I was tearing up!” said Malleck, a self-described Edwardian-at-heart who has worked at the house for 12 years. “Clarence had those one-line-a-day journals from 1908 and 1909 and there were photographs from the Gambles’ Asia trip. Before this we had nothing!”

The tour is built around the Gamble family stories Malleck discovered, as is the new book The Gamble House: Building Paradise in California, on sale now in the Gamble House gift shop. “Upstairs Downstairs” runs three times a day, Thursday through Sunday until August 16.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/tour-the-servants-quarters-at-the-gamble-house/feed/0Plant Food for People is Making Jackfruit Tacos a Thinghttp://www.lamag.com/digestblog/plant-food-for-people-is-making-jackfruit-tacos-a-thing/
http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/plant-food-for-people-is-making-jackfruit-tacos-a-thing/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 20:35:15 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=487389

It’s been four years since Genise and Jeremy Castaneda first turned up in Highland Park with their jackfruit tacos in tow. The couple, who was already selling their vegan sausages and seasonal tamales to a small market down the street, began operating a monthly pop-up called Plant Food for People at a defunct taco stand on York Boulevard. Their tacos, piled high with “carnitas” fashioned from shredded, marinated jackfruit (a green, spiky tropical fruit that grows everywhere from Mexico to Bangladesh and mimics meat like a champ) and dressed with all the traditional fixings were an instant hit, and support from Quarrygirl and other prominent vegan food blogs came quickly.

“The first day we did it, I didn’t know what I was doing, but there was a line of people waiting, so I knew it was needed in the community,” says Genise, who grew up in the neighborhood and taught herself to cook vegan food with the help of a cookbook and Google searches.

“I saw a blog that used jackfruit for a barbecue sandwich, and I was like, ‘Ah that’s so cool, it’s not a faux meat, it’s a fruit,’ and thought I could do it carnitas style since that’s what my upbringing was,” she explains. “We used it for tamales at first, and I thought ‘Oh my gosh, that will be so good in a taco.’ Then I tried it in a taco, and I said, ‘we have to do this, we have to put it out there.’ I just knew that I had to share it with everybody.”

Jeremy agreed. “The tacos became the thing,” he says.

What followed after their debut was a slow but steady uptick of success for the Castanedas, who became a fixture at Highland Park’s Art Walk and eventually in the parking lot of Organix—a small organic market in Eagle Rock—where their weekly Taco Tuesday attracted regulars for a year and a half.

It wasn’t long before Jeremy was able to quit his day job, and with the ultimate goal of opening the city’s first vegan drive-thru restaurant, the Castanedas have recently taken their business to the next level with a new food truck.

“We were actually trying to avoid the food truck thing because we knew of a few vegan trucks when we started that didn’t seem to make it,” says Jeremy, who explains that rising rents in Highland Park, the slow-going nature of opening a restaurant in Los Angeles, and the promising growth of their business led them to reconsider a truck as a viable option back in March.

So far, he says, the risk is paying off.

“We figured if we have the trailer, we can open more days a week and be a little more legit,” he says. “And since then, yeah, that’s the way it’s been. We’re starting to raise money and gain more awareness, garner press, and do bigger festivals. I think it’s helped us.”

Their new mobility, which has given them the ability to operate on a daily basis, is also helping them move beyond the vegan market and introduce their tacos to a wider (i.e. meat-eating) audience via farmers’ markets and food truck rallies. As Latino business owners, they’ve been especially excited by the interest they’ve sparked in the Latino community.

“Jackfruit grows in parts of Mexico, and we’ve had customers bring their parents from Mexico to our stand, and they say, ‘This was growing on my property, and I didn’t know what to do with it. This is a great idea. Thanks for showing us'” says Jeremy. “It’s great to see all these people with open minds.'”

“I think it’s the perfect transitional thing to help them become more aware of what they’re eating and not eat as much meat,” explains Genise, who says the couple has seen changes in the eating habits of their own family members since starting the business. “People are like, ‘hmmm’ at first, but once they try it, they’re pleasantly surprised, and they’re like, ‘Oh, vegans don’t just eat grass.'”

Along with its expanding customer base, Plant Food for People has also grown its menu a bit, offering a torta with their signature carnitas, beans, cashew cheese, slaw, and chipotle mayo. The Boat—basically their taco minus the tortilla—is also available, and they’ve just acquired the equipment needed to produce large batches a potato-based nacho cheese that they’ve served to rave reviews in the past and plan to add to their menu soon.

The big dream: making vegan food accessible to the entire country with a Plant Food for People location in every major city.

Bullocks Wilshire was the most glamorous department store Los Angeles ever knew. The art deco masterpiece opened one month before the stock market crash of 1929 and featured a sumptuous interior filled with exotic woods, rose marble, and gold leaf. It remained a grande dame filled with gowns and fancy pen sets even after Macy’s acquired the store in 1988 and even after severe riot damage in 1992, the store remained open another year, until it was stripped and shuttered by Macy’s. Southwestern Law School saved the day when it adapted the historic building into a new campus with a library, classrooms, and even mock courtrooms.

The school opens the beloved landmark to the community one weekend a year for a series of self-guided tours available by appointment only. A few departure times are still available for Sunday, August 2 tours by calling the alumni office at 213.738.6814 today (Friday) before 5pm. Call now!

If you are especially interested in helping to restore this building you can sponsor the Friends of Bullocks Wilshire for as low as $100. Members are invited to a $55 private tour on Saturday, August 1 that includes either a luncheon or high tea in the legendary tearoom restaurant. Kick over a bigger donation and maybe you will be invited to visit the tower for a nighttime cocktail reception in the private suite of the original owner! Get over there this weekend and enjoy strolling the salons that dressed Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West so long ago.

The Television Critics Association summer press tour charges on, leaving both bad and good news in its wake. HBO programming chief Michael Lombardo took the stage yesterday in Beverly Hills to discuss (among other things) HBO’s current crown jewel, Game of Thrones. The good news? Lombardo says the show will likely surpass its original seven-season projection.“Seven-seasons-and-out has never been the conversation,” Lombardo told reporters. “The question is, how much beyond seven are we going to do? Obviously we’re shooting six now, hopefully discussing seven. [Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] feel like there’s two more years after six. I would always love for them to change their minds, but that’s what we’re looking at right now.” Bonus Throneus: A prequel series is not out of the question.

Lombardo also fielded questions regarding the true fate of fan-favorite character Jon Snow (Kit Harington). While we’re all hoping that Snow–who we last saw bleeding out on the grounds of Castle Black after being stabbed an aggressive amount of times–will, somehow, make it back for season six, Lombardo took the wind out of everyone’s sails at yesterday’s conference.“Dead is dead is dead is dead. He be dead,” Lombardo said. “In everything I’ve seen, heard, or read, Jon Snow is indeed dead.” Clearly Lombardo hasn’t seen, heard, or readreports of Harington arriving in Belfast in preparation for the filming of season six.

So the question remains: Is Jon Snow all dead? Or just mostly dead? Anyone who’s anyone knows there’s a difference between the two.

Each Friday, the Digest surveys the burgeoning L.A. restaurant scene and compiles a list of the newest, most hyped and heralded restaurants in town this instant. Whether big or small, near or far, these are the restaurants that have people talking—us among them. Snag a seat at these hotspots while you still can.

1. LeonaFormer Wilshire executive chef, Mélisse saucier, and Top Chef alum Nyesha Arrington now has a spot of her own in tony Venice Beach. The produce-forward, progressive Californian menu features dishes like the coctel mixto with tomato-watermelon jus and brick chicken with roasted apricots. But Arrington is also cooking fare that hits closer to home: The slow-braised bulgogi short rib and lamb belly wontons are an homage to her mother’s Korean heritage. Wife and husband development team—and first-time restaurateurs—Breegan and Kristian Vallas helped carve some tasteful beachside swagger into the old Canali Café space.

2. CassiaWe were crushed when Brynt Ng’s Spice Table closed in DTLA almost two years ago (to make way for a subway station). Finally, we have a reprieve: Cassia, his new Santa Monica spot, is now open. A collaboration between Ng, his wife Kim Luu-Ng, Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, Cassia has the chilled seafood bar and charcuterie plates you’d expect from a French brasserie along with Ng’s take on Southeast Asian specialties, like kaya toast, jellyfish salad, and pot-au-feu, what Ng calls “a precursor to pho” that includes short ribs, bone marrow, and veggies. Zoe and Laurel Almerinda are doing the desserts.

3. Hatchet HallWe may finally be at a point where Brian Dunsmoor and Jonathan Strader can no longer be referred to as “the guys from Hart & the Hunter.” At Hatchet Hall—situated in the grand Culver City space that was formerly home to Waterloo & City—chef Dunsmoor takes on a manly hunter-fisher menu heavy with game (grilled rabbit, tea-smoked duck, roasted game hen), as well as local stone crab, ridgeback prawns, oysters, and market produce. The through line is the wood-fired grill that lends a smoky char to most dishes. Take a seat at the “Old Man Bar” for a root beer G&T.

4. Broken Spanish
It’s fitting that the former home of Jon Sedlar’s Rivera—which brought modern Mexican cuisine to the forefront in 2009—is where chef Ray Garcia is now serving up his own contemporary take on the foods of his heritage. Heirloom corn tortillas come smeared with beans or what the chef calls carnitas fat. The same pedigreed masa forms the bulk of tamales stuffed with lamb neck and oyster mushrooms or peas, favas, and the herb hoja santa. There’s a whole slow-roasted lamb’s draped in pickled onion and cabbage, but also a version of a chile relleno, stuffed with kale, lemon, and sauerkraut. How perfectly L.A.

5.Rice BarWith Rice Bar, Santos Uy (owner of Papilles and Mignon) and Charles Olalia (Patina and Terranea Resort’s mar’sel) have brought a new star to DTLA’s burgeoning restaurant row on 7th Street. They’ve also added another notch in the belt to the city’s growing Filipino food scene. Get familiar with the Asian nation’s cuisine with Rice Bar specials like thick red sausage slices with pickled papaya and a fried egg on a bed of heirloom rice. A slice of Manila in the Financial District.

6. The Arthur JDavid LeFevre’s latest addition to the Manhattan Beach dining scene is the chef’s take on a retro steak house. Wet and dry-aged USDA Prime and Certified Angus beef cooked over wood fire form the centerpiece of a menu that includes chef-driven on other staples (think a yuzu kosho butter steak topper, Emmental popovers, and even Swedish meatballs). A classically inspired cocktail list lubricates the throwback Beach Cities’ vibe.

7. BierBeisl ImbissBernhard Mairinger is introducing Downtown diners to his unique take on traditional Austrian cuisine. After his first restaurant—the original BierBeisl in Beverly Hills—shuttered in early 2014, Mairinger decided to revive the concept with a more casual, sausage-centric menu (In German, imbiss refers to a type of small food cart). The menu boasts a litany of Austrian sausages, beers, schnitzels, and, if you happen to be taller than six-foot-eight Mairinger, the food is on the haus.

8. Jon & Vinny’sOne of the most anticipated openings of the past few weeks was Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s all-day Italian restaurant on Fairfax, and we’re still excited. The menu focuses on classic red-sauce fare, including crisp-crust pizza, fresh pasta with bolognese, and meatballs. There’s tiramisu for dessert. Tucked behind the dining room is where you’ll find Helen’s, a small wine shop.

9. Simbal
L.A.-native Shawn Pham returns from a four-year sojourn in Vietnam to open Simbal in Little Tokyo. Sweetbreads glazed in fish sauce and a short rib pot pie perfumed with lemongrass an annatto reflect Pham’s pedigree, which includes stints at Sona, Craft, and the French Laundry. Fermented tofu-marinated duck and tamarind fish soup bobbing with far-flung aromatics like sawtooth herb and rice paddy herb speak to his time in the Far East. Look forward to sherry cocktails and tropical sweets.

10. SambarAkasha Richmond, chef and owner of Culver City’s Akasha, has expanded next door to recently vacated Ford’s Filling Station space to launch her new Indian fusion concept, which blends house-made curries and regional dishes from the subcontinent with lighter Californian fare. Expect lots of action from the kitchen’s wood-powered tandoori oven.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/where-to-eat-now-hot-n-fresh-l-a-restaurants-731/feed/0Seven Minutes in Heaven with Sean Bernardhttp://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/seven-minutes-in-heaven-with-sean-bernard/
http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/seven-minutes-in-heaven-with-sean-bernard/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 18:50:25 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=487860Studies in the Hereafter comes out August 15]]>

What is heaven like? The inscrutable nature of the afterlife is at the heart of Sean Bernard’s debut novel Studies In The Hereafter, due out from Pasadena’s Red Hen Press on August 15. The professor of creative writing at University of La Verne and recipient of a 2012 NEA grant has deep roots in the literary West: His great-uncle was the Basque-American author Robert Laxalt, whose work celebrated the lives of immigrant sheepherders. Bernard grew up in Tucson, where his first book, the short fiction collection Desert Sonorous, is set. His SoCal bona fides are strong—Bernard edits at both Prism Review and The Los Angeles Review—but the writer says his new novel is hardly at all about place. “It’s more a lightly thrilling speculative romance.”

The story of star-crossed lovers Carmelo and Tetty, Studies in the Hereafter offers a frustrating and idiosyncratic heaven populated by characters as complicated and lovable as their Earthbound corollaries and a transfixing and mysterious frontispiece: a table of the elements of The Body, about which Bernard says: “I hope that readers look at it and even wonder how they might classify people, what personalities they’d be inclined to consider, weigh, value.”

We spoke to Bernard about the southern California literary scene and whether or not L.A. is heaven.

In Studies in the Hereafter, you write, “No, it’s certainly not how any of us expected this place to be—we were all hoping for something a bit grander, aglow with effervescence and luminescent wonder.” Where did the idea for an afterlife so close in character to regular life come from?I think it’s arguable that heaven is more thrilling than the narrative set in reality.” I hope so, at least, because I wanted heaven to have that extra narrative excitement both as a balance against the slower movement of reality and also because heaven really is the present moment of the story: life in ‘reality’ informs the excitement of all that happens in heaven . . . not vice versa. So heaven’s where things start, where things end, where the action takes place.

That said, for me, the “real” life of the book—especially Tetty’s—is the most . . . human, I guess. The most complex and real. Heaven is far more plot-driven. It’s the thriller. Reality anchors it down. As reality should, I think.

Is there a link between your experiences at the University of La Verne and the world of your novel?There are a few moments in the book where Carmelo, an academic, has interactions with his students—they sort of pass through his life like bright stars, moving onto grander and more exciting dreams, while he stays fixed in his office. (Though of course he strikes out on his own at times, too.) Those moments are the only parts that directly echo the way I relate to students: they appear, they shine, they grow brighter and brighter, and then they’re gone. Which is tremendously great, on the one hand, and a little sad on the other.

I wrote the first draft several years ago, and the bureaucratic elements do somewhat resemble specific aspects of my school, but more generally I hope that they echo the frustrating aspects of any bureaucracy. Here’s the weird thing: Without getting into too much detail, this spring, there was an attempt made to force a departmental merger onto the academic department I reside in. So here I am going through the proofs of the novel—which features a forced merger—and, though of course I’d written it several years prior, it read like I was writing it in real-time, about real events.

What are your thoughts on the state of literature in Southern California?There’s a lot happening. Much of it good! And I’m definitely part of the community, or at least near the community—in addition to teaching and serving as an editor for the journals, my wife Vieve Kaplan helps run a monthly poetry series in Claremont, I bring out writers to my school each semester, we go to readings every month or so, etc. Venues like The Last Bookstore, Skylight, and Vroman’s are all great at letting authors do book events. Poets & Writers has an office out here that helps fund readings—they’ve directly supported me in that way and other ways, which has been tremendous. And AWP is coming this year! And there are many great journals—aside from the ones I work on, Joyland, Santa Monica Review, Faultline, and Black Clock all come to mind. On paper, it’s a great scene.

But given all that, I don’t feel a tremendous sense of community in L.A.—and to be very, very clear, that’s not a complaint; it’s just an observation. I have friends in Chicago talk about the poetry scene there and make it sound more like how grad school was for me: close, enthusiastic, messy, always happening, unfocused and alive. Here—at least for me and again, because of distance, personality, and time—it’s more surgical: go here. Next month: there. An hour drive home? Well, best leave after instead of mingle.

Which is all perfectly okay with me. I think that Cormac McCarthy said something like, “I went into writing so I wouldn’t have to work with other people.” I’m not nearly that much a misanthrope but I do lean a little that way, so not having a community to influence me—it’s good by me! Ultimately my main role in the writing community is as it is for all of us: alone. Alone reading, alone writing. Which isn’t alone at all—but absolutely is.

Given that many people consider southern California a kind of heaven, how did living here influence the one you created in your novel?Oh, I live thirty miles east of downtown L.A., on the fringe of the Inland Empire. Lots of 4×4 trucks and beer drinking—meaning it’s not so deeply healthy out here as it might be in Santa Monica or Brentwood. And while there are certainly California-specific aspects in the novel, since parts are set in California—Basque diners in Bakersfield, an apartment near the Claremont colleges—the setting of heaven is, or at least I hope it is, a blurred version of a very general and anodyne urban center. L.A. has much, much better food than the heaven in my book. Thankfully.

Catch Sean Bernard at the Studies In The Hereafter launch party at Claremont Craft Ales on Saturday, August 22, from 4-6 p.m., and reading with Percival Everett at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena on October 21.

Winning sure looked easy Wednesday night at our “Best of LA” party, which took place on the rooftop of the Sixty Hotel in Beverly Hills. The event was held to celebrate the 83 local business owners and industry professionals we carefully selected for our annual “Best of LA” August issue.

This year’s crop of winners in categories like “Best All-Day Breakfast,” “Best Caftans,” and “Best Community Garden” mingled with magazine staff and “Best of LA” alums from years past, as tasty hors d’oeuvres and Sprinkles cupcakes decorated with the mag’s logo were passed around. Grey Goose and Peroni sponsored the bash.

Editor in chief Mary Melton spoke briefly poolside to congratulate the winners and explain the magazine’s rigorous Best of L.A. selection process. Finding and calling out the top resources across the city, she explained, has been a yearly tradition since our November 1989 issue, when Sally Field graced the cover in a festive top hat.

Feathers are an extreme, decadent mode of embellishment. Despite their airiness, they have the power to transform simple a simple item of clothing into something theatrical and romantic. In Opening Ceremony X Levi’s ReWork‘s new line, they transform cut-offs and T-shirts into lively, special pieces.

The new collection consists of vintage Levi’s classic 501 and 505 jeans and simple cotton tees. The bottom of each piece is lined with a strip of thick and willowy ostrich feather trim. Opening Ceremony founder Humberto Leon says, “We wanted to rework a pair of Levi’s to give it a completely different feel and bring in an unexpected element to the classic fabric.” Feathers are among the most dramatic forms of ornamentation, and their placement on uber-casual, slouchy pants and soft tees is eye-opening. “We were super excited about bringing this element that you would normally see on dresses and gowns into denim,” he adds.

The jeans are offered in stoned blue and white washes, and are available as cut-off and full-length styles. The tees come in black and white, with white or pale pink feathers. Prices range from $125 for shirts to $180 for full-length jeans. Pick them up at Opening Ceremony on La Cienega Boulevard or on the Opening Ceremony Web site.

There are few things more characteristic of summer in L.A. than outdoor cinema. This Sunday, August 2, Hollywood Forever Cemetery together with Cinespia will kick off Sundance’s third annual NEXT FEST with an al fresco screening of Cop Car, starring Kevin Bacon. While the rest of the fest will be indoors, it won’t be any less awesome: Five more films (Mistress America, Finders Keepers, Entertainment, Cronies, and Turbo Kid) will have their Los Angeles premiere at the Theater at the Ace Hotel downtown August 7-9. Each of the films showing at the Ace will be paired with a musical guest and will feature extended Q&As with filmmakers and talent. “Los Angeles is home to a huge audience of people on the cutting edge of what’s new and next in film and music,” says Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper. “Our NEXT FEST was born as an experiment to showcase this and offer L.A. audiences a slice of Sundance in the summer.”

The event’s name is derived from Sundance’s NEXT program, which spotlights stylistically adventurous films made with bold talent (and on micro-budgets). The section, which debuted at the Park City festival five years ago, was partially responsible for the critical success of movies like Obvious Child, Compliance, Appropriate Behavior, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Escape from Tomorrow. The films chosen for NEXT FEST represent the “renegade spirit of independent artists.”

This year’s festivities will also include the chance to experience Birdly, a virtual reality flight simulator that debuted in January as part of Sundance’s New Frontier section. Outfitted with special eyewear, the VR fools viewers into thinking they’re soaring over the rooftops of San Francisco. Now is your chance to check out a technology that is stirring up buzz—scripted VR entertainment is already in the works over at L.A.-based company Oculus Rift’s Story Studio with their animated short Henry. Add to that Nokia’s OZO camera and new media advertising companies like Tongal, and you can be sure that home and theater entertainment is about to get a major upgrade.

If you’re a Birdly, I’m a Birdly.

Photograph courtesy sundance.org

“There’s so much excitement with virtual reality,” Cooper adds. “I think people are starting to understand how it could completely revolutionize how we interact with storytelling. Birdly is fun and crazy and scary and amazing. You really step into another world and get a taste of what it’s like to fly—you feel it through your whole body.” Birdly will be open to all ticket holders and will be hosted on the mezzanine level of the theater with creator Max Rheiner on site.

Want to get in on the action? We’re giving away two pairs of tickets: One pair for the Sunday, August 2 showing of Cop Carat Hollywood Forever, and one pair to the Saturday, August 8 showing of Entertainmentat the Theater at the Ace Hotel. Enter below for your chance to win.

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]]>http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/sundances-next-fest-brings-renegade-talent-and-virtual-reality-to-l-a/feed/0How to Get Into an L.A. Frame of Mind Anywhere in the Worldhttp://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/how-to-get-into-an-l-a-frame-of-mind-anywhere-in-the-world/
http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/how-to-get-into-an-l-a-frame-of-mind-anywhere-in-the-world/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 17:05:20 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=486567

Summer is for going to the beach, staying hydrated, and getting out of Los Angeles. Vacations can be fun, but they can also be a homesickening drag. It doesn’t take long to miss the creature comforts of our city, and being a local— here and everywhere—beats the experience of having to figure out how to best enjoy a foreign place.

To retain some hometown glory on the go, I make sure to bring or find a little bit of Los Angeles wherever I am. Here are six L.A. essentials you can enjoy on a trip, too

ShortsWhen you travel to a place with crisper weather, a pair of cutoffs can be transportive. In shorts, you’ll find yourself thinking, “I could wear these in Los Angeles just fine.” If the weather is warm, you’ll feel like you and your favorite mini-pants are at home. If shorts aren’t your thing, bring a pair of sandals instead.

SunglassesIs it just me, or are shades not that trendy in other places? Don your SALT. Optics and you’ll feel like it’s 76 and sunny wherever you are.

Hiking shoesTravellers walk a lot, so it’s important to pack a pair of comfortable shoes. My go-to set? The shoes I hike in. They’re old reliables that remind me of scaling Runyon and local mounts.

TacosTo be clear: I don’t suggest you throw Kogi into your bag. But you should definitely get some tacos away from home, if for no other reason than to experience how L.A.’s Mexican food staple is interpreted outside the city limits. I once ordered a “taco” in Paris that employed wonton wrappers instead of tortillas. They were kind of gross—and sparked a long, delicious conversation about L.A.’s best-loved snack.

KPCCThanks to a handy app and Web site streaming service, the local news radio station can join you anywhere. KPCC focuses on hyper-locale stories, so you’ll stay current on the goings on in town. An added bonus? It can really help pass the time on long car drives—or while stranded in an airport.

The Last Bookstore is a Los Angeles institution. As bookstores become more and more rare (who remembers the last time they saw an open Borders?), TLA is still here to encourage people to embrace the written word and share their love of books. With the newest section of TLA devoted to rare books and art, it’s only fitting that a talented employee covers the walls with beautiful and majestic art that seems to fly out of the pages of the very books they surround.

NIK Lord should be on your radar. If you don’t believe me, head to 5th and Spring for yourself. Street Art Spotter sat down with NIK and asked him a few questions about his process.

Your style is so detailed and precise. How do you keep focused when drawing on such a large scale?Working on something on this scale makes it extremely easy to loose focus. I like to listen to music while I work to help stave off anxiety. When the walls start closing in I take a step away to come back with fresh eyes.

How long have you been drawing?
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I had the type of parents who were busy and always brought my brother and I along. It was a way to keep me busy. After a while I got into comic books, graffiti animation, and other types of art. The older I got the more my obsession grew.

Favorite medium?
Going to art school definitely helped me expand my knowledge of materials. Oil painting and digital painting have found a permanent place in my heart but somehow I always return to my sketchbook, pens, and pencils.

How did the Last Bookstore mural come about?I’ve worked for Josh [Spencer, owner of TLA] for a few years and he knew I like to draw and paint. Whenever I had a cool drawing or painting, I would show him for his opinion. A year or two back he had me do a mini mural in the stores dollar room. From there he had me design a couple shirts for the store. He told me one day he was going to open a new art book store and asked if I was interested in doing a mural. I told him of course. From Josh telling me what kind of things and imagery he liked, we collaborated on an idea. He said he liked how detail oriented my art is, so he asked if I could make it detailed for him. Even though it’s taking longer than expected, this has been an outstanding experience.

What’s next for NIK Lord?What’s next for me? Good question. Hopefully more opportunities to make a living from my art. This is a way for people to know I’m here still making art and still working on my craft to improve.

Between Coachella, Burning Man, and FYF Fest, the West Coast festival fatigue struggle is real. But don’t let that discourage you from checking out the New Original Works Festival (NOW Fest), opening today. Entering its 12th year, the highbrow NOW Fest will be taking over RedCat for the next three weeks and will feature an eclectic roster of talent spanning art forms and nationalities—all of whom are united by their status as Angelenos. With nine new, original works of dance, theatre, music and multimedia performance, the odds of seeing something amazing are pretty good. At $40 for a festival pass it’s a steal—no camping or crowd surfing required. Here’s what to expect:

Week One (July 30–August 1)

Nguyễn Nguyên, Maria Gillespie, “Bloom”

Photograph courtesy RedCat/Jessica Kaminsky

Nguyễn Nguyên and Maria Gillespie: Bloom
Take an astrophysicist, a video artist, and two choreographers, add in a development period at the Beijing International Dance Festival, and you’ll get Bloom. This explosive piece melds projections and dance for a unique and interesting experience.

Zac Pennington, Jherek Bischoff, and Steven Reker: Crying
String quartets are usually quarantined to stuffy concert halls, but they’ve been co-opted by indie rock darlings Zac Pennington and Jherek Bischoff (Parenthetical Girls) to wax poetic on the status of the pop idol. Choreographer Steven Reker rounds out the group to present the performer in four acts: icon, androgyne, messiah and martyr.

Week Two (August 6–8)

Stina Ahlberg, “Sammanfläta, (Intertwined)”

Photograph courtesy RedCat/Håkan Larsson

Stina Ahlberg: Sammanfläta (Intertwined)
Swedish choreographer Stina Ahlberg conjures demons, goddesses, and other mythic characters to the stage in her Los Angeles debut. Consider this the recent transplant’s formal introduction to her new city.

Robert Cucuzza: Circle JerkFrench writer André Breton is known as the founder of Surrealism, but he was also known for being a sexist jerk. Here, the rants of Breton and his fellow Surrealists are set to a live Gypsy Jazz score and performed by a heavily female cast. Circle Jerk’s name stems from a phrase used to criticize Internet trolls, suggesting that decade-old criticisms are more relevant than we might think.

Week Three (August 13-15)

Kevin Williamson, “Trophy”

Photograph courtesy RedCat/Jeepneys

Cassandra: Stellar TearsStellar Tears is a song cycle put on by a “feminist art-rock power-ballad soul-pop project” named for two Cassandras: one a prophetess from Greek myth, the other a babely guitarist from the cult film Wayne’s World.

Takao Kawaguchi, Jonathan Hall, and Deanna Erdmann: Touch of the Other
In the Sixties, L.A. sociologist Laud Humphrey conducted a controversial study on homosexual activity in the city’s public restrooms. In Touch of the Other, an artist and a choreographer join forces to revisit the research and connect it to present-day issues.

Kevin Williamson: Trophy
We’ll be frank: it’s hard to tell exactly what Trophy is all about. But its creators’ credentials are reason enough check it out. Choreographer Kevin Williamson is known for expressing the human condition through dance, and CalArts favorite Jeepneys is providing the score. With projections by Cari Ann Shim Sham rounding out the piece, Trophy is definitely worth a look.

NOW Fest runs from July 30 to Aug 15, shows starting at 8:30 p.m.

Per show prices: $20 General Admission, $16 for RedCat members and $14 for students. Festival passes are $40.

Folks were surprised recently when their neighborhood Albertson’s became a Haggen market and the local Radio Shack started morphing into a Sprint store, but that’s nothing compared to the epochal transformation happening to Los Angeles – especially for those that love those distinctive unusual joints that make the fabric of the city so special.

The Los Angeles Conservancy and historic preservationists have bigger fish to fry. Most of these are not designated landmark buildings and most of them are not as well known as the handful of buildings that get saved each year but they play a big part in the unique culture of Southern California.

Major change is upon us in 2015 as new topples old and local favorites disappear. Summer isn’t even over and these classic places are heading for extreme remodels, complete demolition, or have already passed into history. Goodbye special places, hello blandness.

Formosa Café interior7156 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90046This 90-year-old restaurant enjoys city landmark status, which protects the building, but not the ancient booths, lanterns, and funk inside that made this a favorite of film location scouts (remember it in L.A. Confidential?) and fans of old Hollywood noir. A remodeling in July stripped the interior and replaced it with less.

House of Blues8430 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069Well, it made it to drinking age. The massive nightclub opened in 1994 with opening acts that included Etta James, Little Richard, Isaac Hayes, James Brown, and co-owner Dan Aykroyd’s Blues Brothers. Staff tells me after they close on August 7, the elaborate interiors and corrugated metal exterior (from a Clarksdale, MI cotton mill) will go into storage as the club looks for a new location. The site will be redeveloped into a mixed-use condo, hotel and retail project.

El Dorado Lanes8731 Lincoln Blvd, Westchester, CA 90045Another 1950s bowling alley goes under the knife to emerge as a luxury bowling center. There wasn’t too much left at this one outside of the amazing mosaic mural outside (which I’m assured will stay) and the vintage terrazzo and flagstone coffee shop KJ’s which will disappear with the remodel.

French Marketplace7985 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90046The family behind MB Post, Fishing with Dynamite, and the venerable Mimi’s Café chain began their empire with the French Quarter restaurant in 1973. The restaurant was tucked into a theme park-style atmospheric New Orleans neighborhood built inside an art deco-era supermarket. The over-the-top environment attracted tenants like Baby Jane, a movie memorabilia shop that stocked autographs, costumes, and “celebrity earthquake ruins.” The restaurant closed in July and has not announced plans to reopen.

Jan’s Coffee Shop8424 Beverly Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90048The first time this venerable address showed up in the newspaper was when a drunken actress crashed her car into it in 1958. A parade of colorful customers wafted through for decades until the diner-style restaurant closed to make room for a Chipotle. The same owner runs Astro in Silver Lake, which benefited from a minor makeover when Jan’s closed.

Figueroa Tower Sky Lobby660 S. Figueroa St Los Angeles, CA 90017Home Savings of America spent big money for decades on custom artwork for each of their bank locations throughout California. When they built a new headquarters in 1989 they assembled a team of artists to fill the building with sculpture, murals, and other now-endangered works. A 360° painting called Latitude 34, Longitude 118, A Southern California Panorama fills the 6th floor “sky lobby” and is especially threatened as new owners remodel the tower.

La Palma Chicken Pie Shop928 N Euclid St, Anaheim, CA 92801Time machine splendor located outside of our normal service area, but close enough to Disneyland that it still counts. Architect Martin Stern, Jr. designed this restaurant and shopping center in high modern style in 1955 before he became famous for Ship’s, the Beverly Hills Public Library, and half of Las Vegas. Otto and Antje Hasselbarth took over the place in 1972 and didn’t change a thing. The restaurant was closed for summer vacation when Mr. Hasselbarth passed away on July 15. It remains closed and it’s future is uncertain.

Belvedere Fireman’s Recreation ClubRecord Ave., East Los AngelesThis century-old “recreation club” for firemen in East L.A. (I’m told it once housed stables) was converted to apartments generations ago. The amazing hand-painted sign survived hidden only to return for a moment and then get painted out as part of an apartment remodel.

Arby’s neon sign6833 Van Nuys Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91405Arby’s Roast Beef vacated their Van Nuys store after 30 years (it was a Roy Rogers Roast Beef before that) and the site is now a Starbucks, but the iconic cowboy hat neon sign lives on at the Valley Relics museum in Chatsworth. When the Santa Monica location closed last year, a similar sign was donated to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Beckham Grill77 W Walnut St, Pasadena, CA 91103This 1970s restaurant with an English taxicab and red phone booth outside is a big, dark fussy labyrinth of olde-tyme, Anglophile folderol of the kind that is nearly extinct in today’s minimalist restaurant interiors. Go have a final prime rib before August 8th, when it closes to be replaced with 201 apartments.

Billy’s Deli216 N Orange St Glendale, CA 91203This 67-year-old restaurant was filled with sassy old waitresses and black-and-white pictures of Glendale. Everything in that place, from the patrons to some of the items in the deli, seemed to be original.

Jewel’s Catch One4067 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019Jewel Thais-Williams has a history degree from UCLA and a traditional Chinese medicine degree from Samra University. She runs a free clinic, a recovery house, and a vegan restaurant. She worked with Hillary Clinton in the early days of AIDS, and serves on the board of endless non-profits…and she runs a dance hall on Pico Boulevard. Her Catch One nightclub opened in 1972, and the ONE Archives at the USC library describes her club as the “Nations’ first black gay and lesbian disco.” Jewel’s last dance was July 18.

Frederick’s of Hollywood6751 Hollywood Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90028The venerable lingerie shop, that once had celebrity brassieres on display at its Hollywood Boulevard flagship and museum, went out with a whimper in April. The chain closed all 94 stores, including #1 at Hollywood and McCadden when it was purchased by a New York holding company with a very unusual history.

Aidikoff Screening Room150 S Rodeo Dr #140, Beverly Hills, CA 90212100-year-old Charles Aidikoff has spent nearly half his life running a private luxury screening room for filmmakers on Rodeo Drive. A dispute between the invitation-only theater and its landlord led to its closure this week.

Phil’s Diner neon sign5230 Lakershim Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 91601The term “diner” gets thrown around a lot, but the only real-life prefabricated dining car diner in L.A. was Phil’s in North Hollywood. In 2008 the city redevelopment agency relocated the decrepit restaurant and it was restored and running beautifully again as Phil’s Diner 2.0 until the operator closed it down after less than a year. The place sat empty for years until a St. Louis barbecue chain moved recently and replaced the neon sign (an exact replica of the stolen original) with their cartoon baby logo.

Figueroa Hotel939 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015The cheaper and weirder cousin to glamour spots like the Biltmore or the Hollywood Roosevelt, this 1920s Spanish style hotel with a 1990s Moroccan overlay feels a little like discovering a secret bazaar filled with dusty carpets and tapestries and hanging lamps. The Trip Advisor reviews are all over the place, ranging from “Grand dame” to “lipstick on a pig.” A $30 million renovation beginning next month will certainly bring it more in line with a fancified South Park but will tame its flamboyant soul.

San Pedro Waterfront Red Car600 Sampson Way, San Pedro, CA 90731Three restored and replica turn-of-the-20th century Pacific Electric red cars clanged their way along the shore in San Pedro for the past 12 years. They are scheduled to go into deep freeze when Sampson Avenue is realigned (without tracks) later this year.

Family Fair810 Meridian Ave, South Pasadena, CA 91030This was one of the first fancy vintage style shops to revitalize South Pasadena when it opened in 1975. The old-time neighborhood candy, gift, and toy store in a charming little bungalow is empty and rumored to become a wine bar.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/askchris/487248/feed/4J. Ryan Stradal Gets Fired Up About His New Book, Kitchens Of the Great Midwesthttp://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/j-ryan-stradal-gets-fired-up-about-his-new-book-kitchens-of-the-great-midwest/
http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/j-ryan-stradal-gets-fired-up-about-his-new-book-kitchens-of-the-great-midwest/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 22:33:36 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=486840

It took L.A.-based author J. Ryan Stradal 364 days to write his debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest (“Without kids or a job, it’s pretty easy to write eight hours a day,” he says with a chuckle). It’s taken far less time, however, for critics to sit up and take note. Released on July 28 by Pamela Dorman Books, Midwest has already drawn comparisons to Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge(which, need we remind you, won a Pulitzer and is now an HBO miniseries). Stradal took some time to chat with us about Mexican food, the Midwest versus the West Coast, and strongwilled characters before heading out on a cross-country book tour.

Considering how quickly you wrote this book, it seems like a story you were itching to tell.It had been turning over in my head a long time, since 2010 or 2011. I’ve been saving money for years—I had been working in TV—to take a year off and write a book. I finally did that in 2013. But I had some false starts. Three of the first four chapters I wrote didn’t make the book. I go in with a plan, but I’m totally open to changing the plan. If the characters start demanding to be treated a certain way, or if I find them making decisions that force their hand, I go with it. If we’re on our way to Six Flags and they need to stop and use the bathroom, we’re going to do that.

I think it’s so interesting when fiction writers say that. As the author, aren’t you the one making the calls?I guess, but once I create a character in my mind, they’re going to do what they’re going to do, you know? They feel like friends and acquaintances, and writing is hanging out with them. I don’t feel like I’m so much telling them what to do as much as transcribing what they do [laughs]. Once I’ve concocted them, they’ve got a mind of their own. And I throw situations at them, like “Oh, your favorite thing is your bicycle? How about I take your bicycle! What do you think of that?”

The book is set in Minnesota. Was it hard to lock into the Midwest mindset while living on the West Coast?Yeah, it was. I found myself going back a lot to get a feel for the place. There were times when I would look out the window and go, “This isn’t so different from Minnesota!” Then as soon as I get off the plane in Minneapolis I’m like, “Oh no, it’s totally different than Minnesota.” The air is different, the landscape is different, the plants are different. I had to strip-mine my memory for sure, but I certainly had to replenish the story with fresh memories. My trips back were strategically planned: I went back to go to the state fair at one point. I also went to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market at the same time of the year that Lars goes in chapter one to see which heirloom tomatoes were in season at that time. I suppose I could’ve figured it out, but I really wanted to see and taste them for myself, see who was there, how big the place is, what kinds of people are selling heirlooms, what their attitudes are. It told me a lot and helped guide my decisions in that chapter.

But overall, in some ways it’s easier to write about a place you’re not presently in. I guess I’m the sort of person that often needs some distance to have some perspective. I’ve lived in L.A. for seventeen years now, so that’s plenty of distance [laughs].

A lot of the story centers around this pop-up supper club concept, which L.A. is no stranger to. Was that inspired by L.A.?That was, actually, inspired by L.A. It’s possible supper clubs exist in Minnesota and I don’t know about it. They’re probably as secretive there as they are here. I certainly know people who do regular monthly dinner parties, the kind in chapter five—that’s pretty typical everywhere. But in terms of the pop-up dinner, that’s more something I’ve seen out here. I left Minnesota in ‘94, and the concept was not on anyone’s radar back then. If it was, it was so secret I didn’t know about it [laughs].

There are real-life Stradal family recipes peppered throughout the novel’s pages. Are there any recipes you’ve picked up since living in L.A. that you wish could have made it into the book?To me this book felt so inspired by my childhood and teenage years that recipes I’ve brought into my life since being in Los Angeles didn’t really have a place in this realm. But there are a lot of things in Los Angeles that I wish I could’ve been exposed to growing up. Perhaps it’s better now, but it’s clear I had no idea what Mexican food was growing up in Minnesota [laughs]. What we had in regards to Mexican food in the ’80s and ’90s was like the airplane version of Mexican food. The school cafeteria version. A faint gustatory reminder of the real thing. But here, oh wow. I think L.A. has the best Korean food I’ve ever had, the best Mexican food I’ve ever had, some of the best Japanese food I’ve ever had, and some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had. And often inexpensively, too—some of the best restaurants that I’ve eaten at in L.A. are in strip malls [laughs]. I think I would’ve incorporated some of that because it’s so distinct in Los Angeles. It may not have had a place in a book specifically set in the culinary world of the Midwest, but certainly my food appreciation has evolved greatly out here.

I know you’re very involved in Los Angeles’ literary scene. Who are three new writers you would recommend right now?Oh, wow, there are so many. The first would be Cate Dicharry. She’s a fellow debut novelist who wrote a book called The Fine Art of Fucking Up. Also Amelia Gray— Gutshotis great. Catie Disabato’s debut novel The Ghost Network is really cool. And there are two books I’ve picked up which are next on my stack, The Starside of Birdhill by Naomi Jackson and All That Followed by Gabriel Urza.

It’s a no frills, nice Chinese restaurant. They make these shrimps called aromatic prawns; I haven’t seen them anywhere else in the world. It’s also a nice price. I can take 20 people, and it’s not like I bought a small car. The food doesn’t taste that good when you have to pay the bill, like, “That was like, $5,000?!” Then you stop and have to get a burger on the way home.

I’m pre-Beverly Center. I remember when there wasn’t this big mall in the middle of the nice area of L.A.; you either had to go to the Valley or somewhere else. When the Beverly Center happened it became the hub of Los Angeles. People from all over—South Central, Beverly Hills, the Valley—go to Beverly Center. If you’re a young guy, it’s a great place to meet women. Good action up in there. Some malls start out cool and end up corny, this one didn’t.

You’re cheating yourself if you don’t go. It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a boardwalk, and it’s much more like Times Square than Hollywood Boulevard is. It’s a classic L.A. scene. I’m very much into places where you’ll see a lot of people, and you see that variety of L.A. people there. But it’s not like South Beach—the actual distance to the water is far even when you’re on the strand. The water is still a quarter mile away!

Melrose isn’t really like Rodeo Drive. There are more boutiquey stores, cheaper stuff, more funky stuff. You’re going to find stuff there you wouldn’t find in the malls. If you can walk it, you should—you can walk a mile one way and a mile back. There are nice restaurants, too, where you can stop and take a break.

If you’ve got a chance to break out of L.A., go to Six Flags. To L.A. people, that’s over the hill. Valencia is a little bit of a roll. But Magic Mountain—I’ve been all over the world, and it’s one of the best amusement parks I’ve been to.

It’s cool to go and check the view out from up there. You get up there and you say, “This is where James Dean shot Rebel Without a Cause. Cool.”

Crenshaw

If you want to go to my neighborhood, go with a guide. Go to Crenshaw and see some of the stuff we rap about. People always come to L.A. and they say, “I didn’t see the streets you guys rap about!” That’s because you got on the highway and went to West L.A. Just get off on Century and drive until you hit Nickerson Gardens or Imperial Courts. Those are the places we rap about. If you get a chance, go to Watts Towers.

It was back in 1953 that Pacific Electric’s Santa Monica Air Line called it quits. Well over six decades later, the line is springing back to life as the Expo Line light rail.

The Expo Line, currently operating between DTLA and Culver City, will extend to Santa Monica’s Fourth and Colorado intersection in less than a year. Testing is now underway and just reached the beach city on Wednesday. Metro was there to capture the historic day and has this very neat video of the train arriving in the Downtown Santa Monica station.

The first testing in Santa Monica has the train being pulled by a big truck but it will soon travel on its own power, and at faster speeds, so be careful out there.

A quick-serve pan-Asian rice bowl and two hours of American hero Kevin Bacon projected the big screen: What could be better on a Sunday night?

ShopHouse Southeastern Asian Kitchen—The Chipotle-owned counter service concept that opened its first test store in Washington D.C. back in 2011 and has since slowly rolled out six more along the eastern seaboard and three in L.A.—will be dishing out free bowls at the Sundance Next Fest on Sunday August 2nd.

The event is presented in partnership with Cinespia and, in classic Cinespia fashion, held in the Hollywood Forever Graveyard. Doors open at 6 p.m., which is when you can get your fill of Thai-inspired ShopHouse specialties like steak larb, chicken satay, green curry, eggplant with basil, and papaya salad—but the real fun doesn’t start until 8:30. That’s when the screening starts for Kevin Bacon’s newest thriller Cop Car, whose IMDB plot summary is simply, “A small town sheriff sets out to find the two kids who have taken his car on a joy ride.”

Tickets are $14 for the showing and you need to order them in advance right here. Come get a rice bowl and a thick slice of Bacon.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail was released 40 years ago. Monty Python played the Hollywood Bowl 35 years ago. Monty Python’s Spamalot opened on Broadway 10 years ago. It’s a season of anniversaries that Eric Idle is celebrating by appearing as the Historian in three performances of Spamalot at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. Or the Bollywood Hole as he’s fond of saying.

“It’s been extraordinary,” he says during rehearsals for the show. “Holy Grail was our first film. We made another film previously, but this was the first film where we were in charge. The two Terrys were directing. It was hard to find the money. And it was only $400,000. That’s what the film cost. We spent that on lawyers for Spamalot.”

Idle thinks the film still casts a spell on audiences in much the same way as a certain film by the Fab Four. “We were young, we were naïve and we were making things up,” he offers. “We were just trying to be funny. I always think of it a bit like A Hard Day’s Night. Young people with enthusiasm not quite sure what they were doing. It’s a very silly film.”

Along with collaborator John Du Prez, Idle turned his “silly film” into a Broadway musical called Monty Python’s Spamalot. The show opened on Broadway in 2005 and ran for over 1500 performances. It also won the Tony Award for Best Musical. “The nice thing about the play, when I read it, it’s a series of short sketches. ‘Well, I’m not dead yet,’ that’s clearly a song,” he says with a laugh. “The hardest thing to adapt was because we played 98 different characters. How to put it on stage? I collected all the parts played by John Cleese and made that one person. All the parts played by me and made that one person. That was the way to be able to do it.”

For these three performances, Idle will be essaying the role of the Historian. But it isn’t his first time in the show. “I actually once popped on stage in Chicago when we were doing the tryouts, because my plane was stuck by snow and I was really angry,” he reveals. “So I said to Christian [Borle], ‘let me go on stage for you during act 2.’ So I went on stage as him and I thought they wouldn’t notice. Of course they went crazy.”

Idle is not just the historian for the play, he’s the historian for Python. Does the cast come to him for guidance? “They all come a little bit,” he says. “They say, ‘just let me know.’ They know I’m watching. Today Jesse [Tyler Ferguson] was doing a part I did, the guard, and he made it his own. And he asked if it was okay. I said, ‘Absolutely, you’ve got make it your own. Otherwise it’s not funny. You have to inhabit it. You have to be in it.’”

Although he’s a pescetarian, Idle had no qualms celebrating canned meat. “I always say, it’s not for eating, it’s just for comedy,” followed by another robust laugh. “But of course, when we grew up in the 1950s with rationing, Spam was what America shipped abroad. Tins of Spam to starving people in Europe. There were recipes for Spam: how to make Spam fritters, how to make Spam in a basket, Spam wings.”

If the Bowl sells out all three nights, Spamalot will be seen by as many people as would have seen 35 sold-out shows in New York. Does that intimidate Idle? “I love the Bowl. It’s fun. Because people have their bottle of wine and they have their dinner and they are in a very good mood. There’s an excitement in the bowl before the curtain goes up.”

With all the concurrent anniversaries, Idle ponders why people rally around this work. He recalls the first cast of Spamalot. “They bonded. It’s been true of any company around the world, they bond. I don’t know if it is Python or it’s silly or whatever it is, they always have a great time. The comedy musical is king. I don’t want to see people with plates on their faces and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Good luck and nice music. I think ‘make ‘em laugh’ is the secret to comedy musicals.”

It’s a known fact that Los Angeles is a melting pot of delicious foodstuffs from just about every country on the planet. So when something new is introduced, even if it’s similar to something we already know, there’s a good chance food lovers will get caught up in a collective tizzy. When Moruno opens a take-out window at the Original Farmers Market on Friday, owners David Rosoff and Chris Feldmeier certainly hope that happens.

For those new to the the moruno: It’s skewered meat spiced with cumin, paprika, turmeric, and chilies that was popularized in Spain but influenced by North African explorers and traders. The tender chunks of lamb, pork, chicken, or vegetables are simply served with a couple slices of bread, so you take a bite, sop up the juice, and it’s a simple, easy snack. On the surface, these aren’t new to L.A.—but dig deeper and you’ll find that Rosoff and Feldmeier are setting their new concept far apart from the rest.

What’s more novel at Moruno is when the meat is tucked into a baguette with mint, onion and something like horseradish baba ganoush, which is served with the lamb and pork and is all sorts of goodness. The chicken is laced with aioli and Serrano chilies, which add some serious heat after a few bites. These “subMorunos,” which they call them, can easily fuel a few lunches in this town.

The more surprising thing is that the bread comes from Spain. “The baguettes are from a bakery in Navarra,” Rosoff says. “It was the only thing we found that even remotely resembled what we had tried with our pinchos morunos.” All we know is it makes a great sandwich (they sent samples and we were hungry), and it’s easy for grab-and-go, which is the point for now.

Rosoff, who’s like the Kevin Bacon of the food world in L.A. (seriously, ask anyone who’s worked in a professional kitchen here and chances are they’re six degrees away from him), was last general manager at the Mozza compound, running the ship in his suit and tie from the day the Pizzeria opened. Feldmeier was chef de cuisine at the Osteria. When the two left to pursue new projects, they settled on morunos and vermouth, two things that really don’t have a spotlight as much as they should in L.A. After travels through Spain, the skewers, which are popular in tapas bars around the country, seemed like the most plausible thing to bring back.

The plan is to open the more full-service Moruno in the former Short Order space with a casual restaurant on the first floor, and Bar Vermut, which specializes in vermouth, including their own made in conjunction with Palmina Winery on the Central Coast, on the second floor. They’ll also open Bar Moruno, which is similar to this take-out window, at the Grand Central Market later this year.

While all of that is happening, Rosoff and Feldmeier, backed by the Bill Chait supermachine, decided to start serving their skewers and sandwiches out of a window to give L.A. a taste. In addition to the meats, there’s a vegetable skewer with halloumi cheese, sweet potato and crimin mushrooms. Side dishes include curry-spiked gunpowder fries, lentils with basmati rice and yogurt, and house-fermented vegetables. The window, located near Gate 7 at the market, opens on July 31 from 11:30am-2pm. It will serve the lunch crowds through Sunday; find out about extended hours and specials via the Twitter handle.

The teaser trailer for Netflix’s first original film, Beasts of No Nation, is here, and it’s heart-stopping. Based on an acclaimed 2005 novel of the same name by author Uzodinma Iweala, the Cary Fukunaga-directed drama (you may know him from True Detective) is a tense look into the life of child soldiers in West Africa. The clip may be short on time but it’s long on suspense—in its most tense moments, the young Agu (played by newcomer Abraham Attah) holds a machete aloft, deciding whether or not to kill the man who may have slaughtered his own family. He is egged on by a hard-hearted leader played by Idris Elba.

Beasts of No Nation is just one in a lineup of Netflix original films that will be part of the service’s foray into video-on-demand (meaning the movies will be available for streaming the same day it they are released in theaters). It premiers on Netflix worldwide and in select Landmark theaters on October 16. Check out the trailer below.

Shifting migration patterns and diminishing natural resources have resulted in an increase of area wildlife forging treacherous paths through L.A. Short of persuading them to stay put, conservationists are hoping to provide them safer routes.

By LandIn 2012, mountain lion P22 succeeded in crossing the 405 and 101 freeways to get from one side of the Santa Monica Mountains to his current Griffith Park bachelor pad. Others weren’t as lucky: This past year three cougar kittens were killed by vehicles while attempting to cross. Right now the only alternative to jaywalking the freeway is a concrete equestrian tunnel in Simi Valley that links animals south of the Ronald Reagan Freeway to Rocky Peak Park to the north. But the National Wildlife Federation is raising funds for what could be the largest wildlife crossing in the world—a bridge spanning ten lanes over the 101 in Agoura Hills. Construction is expected to start in 2018.

By WaterRoads, dams, and culverts make swimming upstream practically impossible for the already-rare steelhead trout, tidewater goby, pond turtle, and other native aquatic life. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has counted nearly 4,000 of these man-made obstacles in the state; there may be more. The agency is lending the creatures some extra muscle by funding barrier-removal projects up and down the coast. In addition, two roads that cut through the streambed at Malibu’s Arroyo Sequit Creek are being replaced this summer with bridges, which should assist our water-bound friends in swimming unimpeded.

By AirEvery fall monarch butterflies head south from the United States and Canada to Mexico, with herbicide-filled farmland and dwindling native vegetation as their primary food supply. These undesirable conditions may explain why monarch populations have plummeted 90 percent in approximately 20 years. To slow their decline, the NWF has recruited Certified Wildlife Habitat gardeners, home owners along the flight path who have volunteered to plant butterfly-safe shrubs to attract the insects. There’s another benefit: A UCLA study found that these gardens suppress more of the greenhouse gas CO2 than traditional plants, which can help offset climate change.

MUSIC: Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni BaAmerican blues has its roots in Mali, where for centuries troubadours have played lutelike instruments. Wailing on his ngoni, which resembles a banjo, Kouyaté serves up a psych-rock version of traditional North African music. More information (July 30; Skirball Cultural Center)

ART: STUDIO: Norbert TadeuszElectric hues and twisting bodies define the neoexpressionist paintings of the influential German artist. This is his first major West Coast show. More information (July 31-August 2; El Segundo Museum of Art)

ART: EmergingMore than 90 ascendant shooters share the spotlight in a collection curated by the industry magazine Photo District News. Local talent includes JUCO, the collaboration between Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud. More information (July 31-August 2; The Annenberg Space for Photography)

COMEDY: Monty Python’s SpamalotRelive the silliness of saber-toothed rabbits and knights who say Ni! In this production of the Tony-winning adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the guest players include former Ewok Warwick Davis, The Office’s Craig Robinson, and original cast member Eric Idle. More information (July 31-August 2; Hollywood Bowl)

ART: Someday is Now: The Art of Corita KentShe was the art world’s most famous nun before Sister Wendy. In the 1960s, Kent’s silk-screen prints ele­vated the humble medium by championing causes ranging from women’s rights to the antiwar movement. On display are works spanning 30 years. More information (August 1-2; Pasadena Museum of California Art)

THEATER: New Original Works FestivalThe three-week showcase spotlights ascendant local talent in the performing arts. More information (August 1-2; REDCAT)

The L.A.-based Web store The Dreslyn has just launched an out-of-this-world home collection. Brooke Taylor Corcia, The Dreslyn’s founder, is adamant about the importance of “building the life you want and diving in wholeheartedly.” Our homes are our sanctuaries, and it’s gratifying to be surrounded by pleasing objects. “I’m fascinated by the concept of identity,” says Corcia, “There’s something intriguing about the home–it’s an intimate space that reveals who we are.”

The new department offers things like minimalist desk accessories by Maison Margiela, charcuterie boards, bar ware, chunks of natural crystal, fixtures by Tom Dixon (who’s best known for his large-scale lighting installations), and textiles by the L.A.-based label Mateo. There’s even a selection of raw apothecary products by Herbivore Botanicals.

Many of the pieces are hand-crafted one-offs. “Our home division is another manifestation of values that we promote as a specialty retailer,” says Corcia. “We believe in sourcing thoughtfully conceived products from independent artisans that will compliment a person’s lifestyle.”

Tasting Kitchen‘s Justin Pike isn’t in the limelight like most of his bartender brethren and he doesn’t go for what’s trendy, but his bar program has won attention as one of the best in L.A. And thankfully, unlike most roaming bartenders, he’s stayed put. Next week marks his 6th anniversary at Chef Casey Lane’s popular Venice restaurant, having come on weeks before it opened. Before that, he helped open the award-winning Clyde Common in Portland. If you want to catch the man behind the bar, he’s there almost every day (his schedule’s here).

I had a chance to ask him some questions as part of our recurring Q&A series with L.A. bartenders. Here are his quick answers.

What’s a popular drink at your bar?

“The Braveheart! That damned Braveheart, the Penicillin variation that won’t go away. I took that drink off the menu four years ago and it’s still our most popular drink! It even has hybrids with other spirits, also named after Mel Gibson’s incredible repertoire. My favorite is the Man Without a Face, which, like the movie, is equally flat with a vodka base.”

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

“From everywhere! It totally depends. Sometimes from a new spirit, a twist on an old classic, and sometimes from an article I read and think, ‘hmm, how can I make this better?” The most interesting thing for me is seeing the change in what I like over the years. Working with the same chef for six years, who has also constantly evolved, you watch how people grow into new things, change what they like, what they don’t like. Even the approach is different. Earlier, I found my approach more raw, impulsive, and accidental. Now I find myself thinking more before each step. You see the same correlation in music that you do in making drinks.”

What’s the best night to go to your bar and why?

“Depends what you want. Weekends are a big party. On the weekdays, its a slightly less big party, let’s call it a medium party… I always tell people to come on the ‘off times,’ like when we open at 5:30. You get more attention and can enjoy the space and wonderfully curated back bar. Or go hang out with John at like 4 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. Order some Zombies and watch him sweat.”

The next big thing in cocktails is_____?

“This question is always funny to me. The best cocktails are still the same ones they’ve always been. Manhattan, martini, gimlet, daiquiri, old fashioned…and a few tiki drinks just for good measure. Oh, and a negroni! How could I have left out that old dog?!”

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

“You should know you’re asking someone who reads and draws tons of comics this question. (My fiancée has learned how to handle a comic book properly when she bent a comic during one of her dinner parties… she enjoyed the tutorial about as much as I enjoyed seeing the bent comic.) It’s gotta be mind reading. Yes, flying is fun, but a red head doesn’t need to be more prone to sunburns out in the open air. Plus it’s probably really cold. And being invisible would be great, too, but you’d have to worry about being super quiet. At least with mind reading, I could make money whenever I wanted.”

Where do you like to drink in L.A.?

“Well, being a ‘Westsider’ means I don’t really leave the Westside. It’s a blessing and a curse. If I want a proper drink I can go to Tasting Kitchen and Scopa. If I want a beer and a fun time, I go bother those guys at the Whaler or the Brig (thanks, guys). My favorite dive bar I am not giving up so it doesn’t get even worse than it is. But let’s just say it;s the last of the true dive bars on Abbott Kinney.”

Where’s your favorite place to eat in L.A.?

“Sugarfish. The warmed rice does it.”

What do you like to drink when you’re not working (doesn’t have to be cocktails)?

“Heh, I had to check my fridge. It’s a sake in a small can called “Kikusui Funaguchi.” They sell is at Whole Foods. I think I am the only person who buys ’em. Now I am wondering if I should have written this; hopefully they’re not out of stock next time I am there.”

It was about this time of year in 1849 when Edward Otho Cresap Ord and his historically underrated assistant, William Rich Hutton, set out to survey the young city of Los Angeles. They dragged their Gunter’s chains over the mustard weed and across the old pueblo’s 17,172 acres. The Golden State had just joined the Union—which meant taxes were due to Uncle Sam—and the L.A. City Council was broke. To scrape up the cash, the council went into the real estate business, peddling city lands to raise funds. Before they could begin land auctions, though, they needed an accurate map of the area, so governor Bennett Riley assigned Ord, a young math whiz and Army lieutenant with mapping experience, the task.

Ord was a rather impressive gentleman. He had been a star pupil at West Point (where he roomed with Civil War hero William T. Sherman) and was distinguished as an officer in the 2nd Seminole War. Hutton, his partner-in-cartography, was impressive as well: he was both a skilled surveyor and an accomplished artist, having made many remarkable sketches of his travels in California. (The Huntington Library owns some 95 of these little gems, which show the wide open spaces of Southern California before gold rush money and railroads changed everything forever.)

The two men started work after inking a contract in July of 1849, and they completed the job in just six weeks. The result was a practical four-sheet map, which they presented to the council on September 19 of that year. Ord did the serious surveying, but it was Hutton, the artist, who drew the actual map. They started in front of the church in the middle of the pueblo (at the center of the big X on the map) and moved across the landscape from the river to the hills and then from Old Calvary cemetery to the last house in town. They didn’t have to go far; at the time, Los Angeles consisted of an adobe church and about 100 adobe buildings—not exactly a megalopolis. Nonetheless, the Ord Survey is recognized as the granddaddy of all Los Angeles maps, and remains of interest to historians today.

On the map street names are written in both Spanish and English. Look closely and you can see Calle de Eternidad or Eternity Street (now Broadway) which lead, appropriately, to the graveyard, Calle Fortin or Fort Street (now also Broadway), which in turn headed toward Fort Moore, Calle de Los Chapules or Grasshopper Street (now Figueroa), Calle de las Avispas or Hornet Street (now Yale), and familiar roads like Hope Street, Flower Street, and Spring Street. As D. J. Waldie has pointed out, Los Angeles’s topography and its unpredictable river give it a crooked layout. Here, the city is mapped at a tilt of 36 degrees, which seems about right for L.A.

If you’ve glanced out your window and noticed a coyote slinking down the street, you’re not alone. Research shows these wild dogs are not only surviving in L.A.’s dense urban environment, they’re thriving: the coyote population is growing. We already know howcoyotes work, but where in the city do they really hang out? The National Park service has launched an effort to find out.

Using GPS collars, the NPS is now monitoring coyotes’ activities and locations. So far, only two canines—one male and one female—are sporting the high-tech accessories. The female, a mother of an estimated five pups, has been recorded crossing the 101 Freeway multiple times since May 5.

Researchers at the NPS put together a map to track the two coyotes around L.A.

Photograph courtesy National Park Service

KPCC reporter Jed Kim recently followed a team with the NPS in tracking, observing, and catching the coyotes in order put the collars on. Justin Brown, an ecologist with the NPS, told Kim coyotes often come into nonviolent contact with humans, cutting in and out of the street to avoid them.

Brown also told KPCC this new study will help the NPS get an idea of how many coyotes call L.A. home: “[Coyotes] are territorial, you know that there will only be a certain number of animals in that home range. And so you then you can estimate that out by saying there’s x number of home ranges in this area.” Brown is holding off on more capture attempts until September, so as not to risk accidentally catching a pup.

When I was a kid my father roomed in a Victorian mansion in Angelino Heights. In his small corner of a big house I saw my first pocket doors and bulls eye rosettes. I learned about lath and plaster and saw the lead weights that made the windows stay up. I loved poking around the 19th century house, but an even sharper memory was from the tiny bathroom window that overlooked downtown Los Angeles.

A great building boom was going on in the 1980s and construction cranes crawled over half-finished high-rises. I asked my dad when downtown “would be finished” and got a lecture about life being a journey. Things slowed down right around the time the Library Tower (now U.S. Bank tower) was finished in 1989 and that 73-story building has been the tallest building west of the Mississippi ever since.

Last February, Korean Air, the owners of the Wilshire Grand project, broke ground for a new 73-story tower with office space and a hotel operated by InterContinental Hotels Group. Workers poured 21,200 cubic yards of cement in 18 hours, the largest continuous pour in history. That statistic was staggering, so as the tower passes the 53-story mark we reached out to architecture firm A.C. Martin, who crunched the numbers and provided these renderings and a handful of statistics to help us understand just how massive the (new) tallest building in the west will be.

1,100 feet – The tallest point will rise 82’ higher than the U.S. Bank Tower

Social media erupted over the news that Minnesota dentist and trophy hunter Walter Palmer shot and killed a beloved lion in Zimbabwe, mostly because that lion—his name was Cecil—was collared and protected by Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. (Texas cheerleader Kendall Jones, who made headlines last year for her “love” of killing African game, is probably thrilled to see a new bully in activists’s crosshairs.)

Palmer paid a reported $50,000 to be taken on a hunt by two local guides who lured 13-year-old Cecil out of the sanctuary of Hwange National Park by tying a dead animal to the top of a car (a process known as baiting). Palmer then wounded the animal with a crossbow; 40 hours later, he killed Cecil with a gun before skinning and beheading him. When the hunters noticed Cecil’s GPS collar, they unsuccessfully tried to destroy it. Despite the damning evidence, Palmer says he was led to believe the killing was completely lawful.

Jimmy Kimmel spent five minutes of last night’s monologue methodically ripping Palmer apart, calling him “the most hated man in America who never advertised Jello-O pudding on television.” He even tears up at the 4:13 mark. Take a look below.

Some Expo Line commuters freaked out recently when they heard a proposed mixed-used development will eventually replace a large park-and-ride lot at the Culver City station. With ample free parking, it was easy to ditch the car and ride the train to the Galen Center or L.A. Live. The good parking news is that the development will include 300 subterranean spaces for Metro riders; the bad news is that amount of spaces is about half of what the Culver City lot offered.

Metro is most likely counting on the coming extension to Santa Monica to help absorb the difference. Stretching 6.6 miles through West L.A. and Santa Monica, the new addition will mean less people driving to Culver City since they can hop on the train at the seven new stations. With construction wrapping, and an opening tentatively planned for March, many Westsiders have noticed the new line also includes some parking of its own.

The station at Expo and Sepulveda (just south of Pico) will offer the most spaces, with a 260-car garage a few steps from the station. At Expo and Bundy (closer to Olympic), surface parking for 250 cars on Exposition Boulevard will be included. Finally, at the SMC/17th Street station on Colorado Boulevard, a small, 70-spot surface lot will be a stone’s throw away. All in all, that’s 580 spaces.

For now, parking at Metro stations is free, though the transit agency is in the midst of rethinking that policy and may start charging by the time the extension opens next year.

While violence is not our forte, we are more than willing to get in the mix when street food dominance and national pride is on the line. Offering such a battleground is Downtown L.A.’s Border Grill, which will be hosting its Latin Street Food Fight series every Tuesday in August as a sort of World Cup proxy (with way better snacks and cocktails).

Each week, two Latin countries will be pitted against each other in the foodie octagon. Dishes from both regions will be served ($5 a la carte/$25 for all you can eat), and customers will be able to cast their votes for their favorite cuisine via Twitter and Instagram. The last night of the event will serve as the “Battle of the Nations” where the four top countries will compete for the big win.

All bites are by chefs Michelle Lainez and Carlos Jurado with consultation from owners Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. First up will be Spain vs. Mexico with dishes like Bocadillo de Jamon (cured ham and manchego cheese on a house-made bolillo) and Grilled Squid Tapa representing the Euro contender and Tamarind Shrimp Agua Chile and sweet tamales putting up the dukes for our neighbors to the south. Spanish and Mexican cocktails will also be available for $7 a pop.

The Malibu Racquet Club was bouncing with activity over the weekend as Vika Azarenka held her second annual Children’s Hospital Los Angeles ProAm Tourney. She was joined by other notable tennis pros including Madison Keys, and Coco Vandeweghe. “I’m so excited I couldn’t sleep for the last two days!” Azarenka said before everyone picked up their racquets. “It’s such a beautiful hospital,” she added, talking about her visits to the facility. Why hold court at the club tucked behind the Malibu Country Mart? “It’s so cozy. It feels like home,” Azarenka said. The Kogi truck drove in around noon to the delight of players and spectators.

The fellas took a lot of ribbing, especially Fabrizio Sestini, who was given the moniker “Male Gigolo” by one of the tennis pros. Amateur player Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine showed up Saturday morning ready to play even though the band played in Mexico the night before. What brought him out to Malibu before noon the day after a gig? “Coco invited me,” he said with a grin. Sounds like love to us.

When Phantom Carriage’s Martin Svab went to Portland earlier this year, he was excited for the opportunity to chat with some of the country’s greatest sour beer smiths. The tart beer geniuses at Cascade Brewing were hosting something of a sour convention, where brewers from around the country could swap tips and absorb the wisdom of the world-class Cascade brewing team (for some context: Cascade’s 750 ml sour bottles regularly go for more than $30—and they’re worth every penny). But Svab left Portland with much more than an invigorated love of sour beer; he left with the promise of a collaboration between Phantom Carriage and Cascade Brewing.

“I looked up to Ron [Gansberg, head brewer at Cascade] for many years,” Svab says. “And Cascade was the one to propose the collaboration. It was a huge deal for us.”

The resulting collaboration dropped during L.A. Beer Week to rave reviews (a 13.7% sour blend of bourbon and syrah barrel-aged beer? Yes please). And it also signaled to the beer world what Angelenos already know: The L.A. craft beer scene is rising to national prominence.

“Overall—and in short order—Los Angeles is creating its own beer culture. And it’s getting better every year,” Ron Gansberg of Cascade says. “We want to cement some long-term relationships with L.A. brewers. Collaborations are a great way to do that.”

Gansberg also collaborated with El Segundo Brewing Company on a double IPA/quad blend called Perfect Strangers. But there are several other nationally-prominent breweries that have been sniffing around the L.A. beer scene.

“It’s been amazing to watch Los Angeles catch up,” Phantom Carriage’s Svab says. “We’re more organized, there’s better beer, and people are paying attention.” He says that while L.A. hasn’t reached the upper echelons of American beer cities just yet (see: San Diego, Portland and the greater Denver area), we’re certainly on the way there. Just look at who’s looking at us – breweries from each of those beer hubs are collaborating right now with Los Angeles’ finest.

Lest there was any doubt, we now know that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s Tina Fey, Jane Krakowski, and Tituss Burgess are proud members of Queen Bey‘s Beyhive. After kicking off the Television Critics Association press tour on Tuesday in Beverly Hills, Burgess uploaded a video of the trio a lip syncing Bey’s “***Flawless” to his Instagram account. Yes, they’re on a private plane (ride round in it!); no, you shouldn’t try to re-create this magic on a jam-packed 747—they woke up like this, not us.

Love Adorned may be better known in New York, where store owner Lori Leven made customized facial piercing a thing, but the business’s newest outpost, which recently opened in Santa Monica, features one-of-a-kind items made mostly in L.A. Designers Elizabeth Street, Communion by Joy, Nature’s Geometry, and Nick Potash all sell items through the shop.

Love Adorned specializes in unusual accessories, like quartz pendants with internally set gems, strung on braided cords, but Leven’s cultivated an impressive collection of vintage fine jewelry, From gold and pearl Victorian drop earrings to turquoise and sterling silver rings made by members of the Pueblo of Zuni, it covers a lot of ground. Apothecary products, vintage textiles, and select pieces for the home like handwoven baskets, ceramics, and charcuterie boards are offered as well.

The space is bright and clean, with glossy white floors and a soaring ceiling. Black steel jewelry cases and asymmetrical mirrors seem to float in the paired-down setting.

“I’m not an actor. I can’t act. At all.” That was how Jake Shears, the lead singer of the band Scissor Sisters, responded to a question in 2009 about the possibility of his acting in a musical he had written based on Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. Fast forward six years and his perspective has changed. Shears is appearing as Greta in Moisés Kaufman’s new production of Bent, written by Martin Sherman. The show is now playing at the Mark Taper Forum.

“I think that was maybe still the case when I walked in the first day of rehearsal,” Shears says during previews of the show. “I don’t think that’s the case now, just from what I’ve learned from Moisés and everyone around me. It’s felt like I’ve just had the most amazing first-person education about acting from an amazing man; a very talented director.”

Bent takes place in Germany in the mid-1930s. Max (Patrick Heusinger) is dating Rudy (Andy Mientus), a dancer at a nightclub owned by Greta (Shears). When the Gestapo invades Max and Rudy’s apartment, they are forced to flee knowing that the SS is not only rounding up Jews, but also homosexuals. Greta is the first person they turn to for help.

“Greta is a businesswoman,” says Shears of his character. “I think Greta is a gay guy who came up in the clubs and ended up owning his own club. I think Greta’s wife is probably a lesbian herself that he met through the clubs. They could live their lives, they could do what they want on the side, but also have this basic cover to make life a little bit easier.”

All the backstory he has created is important for Shears to portray Greta. “You are just getting a little slice of this person,” he offers. “It’s four pages. I guess all the blanks you are filling in yourself. This character is tough. She’s not a nice person at all. I wouldn’t call her an opportunist. She’s a fucking bitch.”

In the play, Sherman wrote lyrics for a song called “Streets of Berlin,” which is how Greta is introduced. But he left the music up to the individual actors and productions. “I love the fact that there’s always a new song,” Shears says enthusiastically. “Moisés wanted it to sound very period, very Kurt Weill-esque. I already have that in my musical vocabulary. I wrote it with Lance Horne. It’s period, but it’s got my stamp on it. I think it could easily, and has been, a torch song. But I switched it up to have these very slow, sultry moments. Then it breaks out in a Liza Minnelli extravaganza.”

Scissor Sisters, Shears reveals, isn’t currently making music together. “We will do another album someday,” he says. “I’m going to make my own record first.” He’s also writing a new musical with Elton John. “He’s just a very loving, nurturing, inspiring man. He made me get a little teary the last time we got together. He sat me down and told me why we were working together. It was really emotional and wonderful. I’m super proud of what we do together.” This isn’t their first collaboration. Elton co-wrote the Scissor Sisters song, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing.”

With so much on his plate, does Shears foresee acting again in his future? “I think Bent has shown me the kind of divine pleasure of going ahead with something even though it might be really scary. I want to be able to apply this to other things in my life that freak me out. It’s been one of those things where I’ve said, ‘I can’t’ for years, and now I can say, ‘I can.’”

In the wake of yet another mass shooting (this time in Lafayette, Louisiana), the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 on Tuesday to pass an ordinance banning the possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines. That means gun owners will have to get rid of magazines that hold more than ten rounds; once the ordinance goes into effect, they have 60 days to destroy, turn in, or legally sell any outlawed stock. The ban, which has been in the works since the Sandy Hook shooting of 2013, was spearheaded by District 2 representative Paul Krekorian.

“Gun violence is an issue I’ve cared deeply about for decades,” he told us. “This particular issue of large-capacity magazines, of course, I think is on everyone’s mind because of the repeated horrors that we continue to be exposed to in the news with stories about mass shootings.”

More than 60 percent of the mass shootings in the U.S. involve the use of large-capacity magazines, he explained, and though the sale, importation, and manufacture of the magazines have been illegal in California for 15 years, ownership has remained A-okay. Not anymore.

“The act we took today is not going to prevent future shootings, but it may help make the next mass shooting a little bit less lethal,” Krekorian said.

Next week the City Council will vote on another ordinance, this one to mandate the safe storage of firearms by requiring that handguns in homes be either locked or controlled by the owner in a way that prevents others from accessing them.

“There are 15,000 shootings of kids in this country every year,” Krekorian said. “Most of those take place in either that child’s home or in the home of a friend or a relative. The vast majority of those shootings would have been prevented had the firearm been properly stored.”

Given today’s unanimous vote, Krekorian expects similar support for the ordinance next week.

“I’m very proud that this city’s leadership and population have been very progressive and visionary in trying to find ways to reduce the endemic gun violence that we have faced,” he said. “And I hope that the state and the federal government will follow suit.”

Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle empire, has teamed up with Edie Parker on a new line of Hip Hop-themed clutches. The pearlescent, hardshell bags are available for $1,695 on the Goop Web site.

One clutch is inscribed with “Hov,” the nickname of Paltrow’s longtime friend Jay Z, in swoopy, silver script. “Shady” (Eminem’s moniker) is emblazoned in gold glitter on the other side. A second clutch comes in an oceanic blue and features the Notorious B.I.G.’s handle, “Biggie,” on one side and “Pac,” short for Tupac Shakur, on the other. The selection of rappers that made it onto the clutches are just some of Paltrow’s favorites.

The bags are, unsurprisingly, eliciting some snarky reactions. But let’s suppose the juxtapositions of the names are intentional–the Biggie/Pac bag, especially, may have even been fabricated just so that the Internet would have something to freak out about (Biggie and 2Pac were in an infamous rivalry). Concerns over the brand’s commercialization of rap names aside, the collection would be stronger if it consisted of four different clutches, each printed with a single name. But they’re glitzy, eccentric, tongue-in-cheek, and, above all else, proof of Gwyneth’s capriciousness.

In the 60s, while America was shakin’ and bakin’, when Lawry’s taco seasoning made taco night a breeze, and the best thing that had ever happened to us was soda in a can, Mexico was experiencing a city-wide taco frenzy as new places set out to create iconic combinations that would last for an eternity. El Villamelón, founded in 1961, is such a place with its taco campechano (combination) consisting of cecina (beef jerky), longaniza (sausage), and chicharrón (pork rinds) on a corn tortilla next to the Plaza de Toros (bullfight ring) where delicious tacos and talking bullshit were all that was needed for a good time. Now, Jimmy Shaw and Loteria Grill are serving their own taco estilo Villamelón (Villamelón-style) on their Taco Tuesdays menu.

Loteria Grill, the original L.A. taco and Mexican spirits bar, was serving traditional Mexico City-style tacos and antojitos with tequila, cocktails, and mezcal before it was trendy—both here in town and across the country. Loteria just turned 13-years-old earlier this month and one of the ways Shaw is celebrating is with his new Taco Tuesdays, featuring famed tacos from Mexico City like sabanas de pollo al pastor (thin ribbons of chicken al pastor), queso panela empanizado (batter-fried cheese), and the show-stopping taco estilo Villamelón.

Loteria’s taco estilo Villamelón starts with hand-pressed, quality corn tortillas and a hot cast-iron pan filled with cecina (beef jerky), pork rinds in a salsa of chile morita, grilled onions and the standard street taco garnishes: a squirt of lime, chopped cilantro, and raw onions. Spare yourself the same old same old and check out these tacos chilangos (Mexico City style). They are a breath of fresh air among the otherwise stale standard taco truck fare, and a throwback to the Golden Age of of Mexico City taquerias, where the food and the conversation shared center stage. Throw in some tequila shots and old school margaritas, and you’ve got Taco Tuesdays at Loteria Grill.

Somehow between running Pok Pok Phat Thai in Chinatown, building the new Pok Pok (coming soon, hopefully later this year), and overseeing restaurants on both coasts, chef Andy Ricker found time to play host to the Luckyrice festival, which returns to the Create Nightclub in Hollywood this week.

“I don’t feel like I’ve gotten very involved in the food scene on a social basis yet. I’ve been buried in building out Pok Pok, where I’m very hands on day to day,” says Ricker. “I do love the SGV and Koreatown, though, and I’m slowly exploring other neighborhoods when I have a few hours after work.”

If we asked festival founder Danielle Chang which city is her favorite—the event also takes place in New York, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago—she’d probably say New York but would whisper L.A. “Even though Luckyrice has a universal goal of spotlighting Asian culture through food and drink regardless of what city we’re in, Los Angeles is definitely one of the best places to explore Asian food today,” she says.

This year the event aims to show how “evolved” Asian food culture is here, so expect a blend of traditional dishes like Ayara Thai’s chicken khao soi, a curry dish from the northern region of Thailand, but also unexpected dishes that riff off of Asian street food culture, like Fluff Ice’s Chamango, a mango fluff with spicy popping boba. “There’s such a collision of cultures in L.A., and I feel like a lot of chefs and bartenders don’t follow rules and conventions. They’re breaking boundaries, culinary and otherwise,” says Chang.

Luckyrice loves L.A. so much that the group is bringing their popular and previously New York-only Ramen Slurpfest and Cocktail Feast to the West Coast this fall. The Slurpfest is like speed dating for noodle fans: Different bowls from various Japanese prefectures are featured and guests “speed slurp” through each one before moving on the the next station. It takes only 13 minutes to slurp a bowl of ramen in Japan, so that’s all you get here, Chang says. The Cocktail Feast turns chefs into bartenders to create drinks with Asian ingredients and lots of Bombay gin. Look for both in October.

Luckyrice takes place on Thursday, July 30, from 7-10pm. Tickets are $88 for general admission and $150 for VIP. Get them here.

You’ve seen them fly through fireworks, across perfect PCH beaches, and over East L.A., but today, drones are descending on this magazine’s home turf. This afternoon, July 28, a deluge of hover cams will levitate around 5900 Wilshire Boulevard—or so an office memorandum says.

It’d be reasonable to think they’ll be up there getting a bird’s eye view of LACMA’s Urban Light, but that’s not the mission. The Ratkovich Company, who owns our 32-story tower, has deployed them to update their stash of marketing images. Fans of the food truck army lining the south side of Wilshire needn’t worry—the drones will fly no lower than 20 feet, so go ahead and enjoy those tacos in peace.

Starry Kitchen began in 2009 as an unassuming part-time restaurant run from Nguyen and Thi Tran’s North Hollywood apartment, but thanks to the enigmatic dishes—and even more enigmatic patrons—it quickly landed on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list and became Yelp’s top rated Asian Fusion restaurant. After it was shut down because of legal complications a year later, and the inaugural brick-and-mortar shuttered shortly after that, the operation became a whirlwind of semi-permanent pop-up stints. When their January Kickstarter campaign failed to raise $500,000, it looked as if Starry Kitchen was left for dead.

Starry Kitchen first teamed up with Uber Eats back on July 7 to bring some if its signature pan-Asian dishes to Angelenos who happen to own a smartphone and live south of Sunset and west of the 5. On Tuesday July 28, they’re returning for round two. From 5 to 8:30 p.m. you can get an order of their crispy green tofu balls with Sriracha aioli and and Malaysian chicken curry with Okinawan sweet potatoes delivered to your doorstep for $12.99.

According to Nguyen—the guerrilla restaurant’s co-owner and banana suit-wearing hype man—the first attempt was not only successful, it was too successful. Uber was hit with such a massive flood of Starry Kitchen requests that some people wound up deprived of tofu balls and curry. Though Nguyen feels bad about the loyal fans who went to bed hungry, he’s also flattered by the demand.

“We had no idea people still loved or remembered us which was honestly, incredibly, and surprisingly touching,” he says. Emotional gratification and unexpectedly high sales numbers are why Nguyen and co-owner, executive chef, and wife Thi decided to come back for a second stab at the delivery pop-up game.

Aside from Starry Kitchen, Uber Eats has also been delivering food from Fundamental, Birch, Goldie’s, Bay Cities, Phorage, and other L.A. institutions. The demand for enjoying a first-class meal in the comfort of your own home (probably not wearing pants) only seems to be growing, and Nguyen thinks that can be a good thing.

They’re doing real numbers and giving restaurants real exposure to an even wider base of customers,” he says. “It’s an incredibly mutually beneficial relationship for both Uber and the businesses.”

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/starry-kitchens-balls-hit-the-streets-for-uber-eats-round-two/feed/0City Councilman Repairs His Own Sidewalk to Make a Pointhttp://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/city-councilman-repairs-his-own-sidewalk-to-make-a-point/
http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/city-councilman-repairs-his-own-sidewalk-to-make-a-point/#commentsTue, 28 Jul 2015 19:51:29 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=485508

The City of Los Angeles is investing $1.4 billion into sidewalk repairs, but Joe Buscaino, 15th District city councilman and chairman of the Public Works Committee, is repairing his own. In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel over the weekend, Buscaino tears out the tree roots that have buckled the sidewalk in front of his house and pours concrete for a brand new walkway. Why all the backbreaking toil?

“It’s a property owner responsibility to ensure that the sidewalk is accessible,” Buscaino says in the video, as day laborers (his son and nephews) hack at roots with a mattock. “The damage that was caused by my sidewalk in front of my home was caused by a tree on private property.”

He’s got an ulterior motive, too: emphasizing that the city isn’t responsible for fixing sidewalks that have been damaged by roots from trees in homeowners’ (or their neighbors’) yards. That burden falls on the shoulders—and wallets—of the homeowners themselves.

Buscaino, ever the model citizen (he biked 25 miles to work in the rain for crying out loud), is leading the charge, with the help of his father, son, nephew, and Uncle Sal, who, conveniently, is a licensed contractor with years of masonwork experience.

According to the L.A. Times, the city has begun a project of repairing sidewalks over the next 30 years, starting with the sidewalks near government buildings, followed by transportation corridors, hospital areas, business districts, and, lastly, neighborhoods (but only sidewalks damaged by public tree roots, remember). The Public Works Committee and the Budget and Finance Committee are hosting a public meeting to discuss the major project tonight.

Looking for a little help repairing your own sidewalk? We called the councilman to see if Uncle Sal is still in business, and (alas!) he’s retired. His main occupation now is babysitting the Buscaino kids, so it looks like you’re on your own.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/city-councilman-repairs-his-own-sidewalk-to-make-a-point/feed/0Scenes from the Special Olympics World Games Opening Ceremonyhttp://www.lamag.com/theseen/opening-ceremonies-special-olympics-world-games/
http://www.lamag.com/theseen/opening-ceremonies-special-olympics-world-games/#commentsTue, 28 Jul 2015 19:03:09 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=485457

On Saturday night the Coliseum burned bright as athlete and Special Olympics co-founder Rafer Johnson and Special Olympian Destiny Sanchez lit the caldron signaling the opening of 2015’s Special Olympics World Games. All arms were in the air as 6,500 athletes from 165 countries joyfully entered the stadium. Over 65,000 fans showed up to cheer the athletes on, and they were joined by celebs like Colin Farrel, Scott Hamilton, Jimmy Kimmel, and Eva Longoria, among others. Check out the inspirational scene from the field and stands and be sure to hit some of the events taking place in L.A. over the next six days. All are free to the public.

The list of celebrities who have bravely stepped up to the plate and accepted Jimmy Fallon’s lip sync battle challenge on The Tonight Show includes names like Emma Stone, Will Ferrell, and Kevin Hart, but not until last night have we found a winner. As it turns out, Tom Cruise’s well documented enthusiasm for pretty much everything is a real plus when lip-synching The Weeknd’s club thumper “Can’t Feel My Face” as well as Meatloaf’s classic “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” To no one’s surprise, when Cruise launches into song (real or lip-synched), he means it. The real highlight of Cruise’s appearance on The Tonight Show was his duet with Jimmy Fallon, though. The pair gave a heartfelt rendition of the Righteous Brothers’ 1964 classic “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”

The song experienced a renaissance moment in pop culture when, in 1986, it was reintroduced as part of the soundtrack to TopGun, which of course starred Cruise.

A good bar name is hard to come by. Most are either Google search nightmares like The Bar or The Pour House or evoke the same breadth of emotion as someone introducing himself as Bob. (Sorry, Bobs.) Rarely are they ever anything that makes you smile because either bar owners think on it too much or not enough. But for the team at Hatchet Hall, when it came time to name their backroom bar, the name just came to them: Old Man Bar.

When they were first setting up the restaurant and bar, after a complete reconstruction of the old Waterloo & City space, the staff would always refer to that space as the Old Man Bar, a nod to its former incarnation during its Crest House days as a hangout for old men. “All the old guys would hang out there and hide from the wives. At 4 o’clock this would be filled with old guys smoking and drinking $4.50 Martinis,” explains bar manager Cappy Sorentino. “We played with names for awhile and started joking and calling it the Old Man Bar and it kind of stuck.”

The theme isn’t carried out to the point of cigarette smoke fog. And yet, you kind of expect there to be that tell-tale grandpa aroma thanks to the hunting lodge-esque decor of wingback arm chairs, old oil paintings and, of course, taxidermied animal heads. Thanks to the vibe and bar program created by Sorentino, instead of old men leaning up against the bar, it’s cocktail geeks, visiting bartenders, and restaurant patrons.

The Old Man Bar—dark, boozy, and intimate—is the perfect counterpoint to the Hatchet Hall restaurant which is light and airy. Sorentino made sure to contrast the differences in the two menus too. Hatchet Hall has the food-friendly cocktails with ingredients inspired by the kitchen as well as fancy garnishes like edible flowers. The Old Man Bar’s offerings are more conducive to shots or sipping, and its fanciest garnish would be the strip of country ham hanging over the rim of the glass in the In Fashion—an updated, ham-washed riff on a whiskey classic.

However, the use of vintage glassware gives the cocktails their “ooh” factor upon presentation. Sorentino took it upon himself to hunt down delicate vessels throughout Los Angeles, cleaning out about nine Goodwills in the process. But he only picked out those fitting the style he had in mind, specifically Japanese-style rocks glasses.

“We wanted to make this room special,” he says. “They’re fancy but they’re all what your grandma probably had. It has a timeless feel.”

Old Man Bar is a dealer’s choice driven bar, drinkswise and musicwise. Instead of DJs or piped-in satellite radio, the bartenders man the record player themselves. Guests will also be encouraged to bring in their own vinyl as long as it works with the room. Think: Sly and the Family Stone, Bob Dylan, the Kinks. Leave Taylor Swift at home. The most current record they have is D’Angelo’s last album, Black Messiah. “Neo-soul—I love it,” says Sorentino.

Right now the drink list for both Old Man Bar and Hatchet Hall are short but will continue to grow in the coming weeks, according to Sorentino. “We’ll add drinks two at a time for the next couple of weeks. We’ll probably end up with eight to 10 cocktails back here and 10-15 in the restaurant.”

You can look forward to a housemade pechuga mezcal cocktail at Hatchet Hall while Old Man Bar is getting its own clarified milk punch, one with a Southern influence to complement Chef Brian Dunsmoor’s food.

The Old Man Bar opens at 8 p.m. on weekdays, 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and closes at 2 a.m. every night. “People have their drinks at the restaurant and then come here after. It’s a really good bar to finish the night. It’s darker, you just had a big meal so have a Fernet cocktail and relax in a dark room,” suggests Sorentino.

Natural, chemical-free deodorants are gaining top-shelf real estate. By definition, a semi-organic deodorant should be relatively free of aluminum, an ingredient used to block pores and prevent you from sweating. Deodorant, whether you love it or hate it, is a regional necessity; L.A. ranks as the 8th sweatiest city in the U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s National Climatic Data Center.

I thought it might be time to re-assess the clean-laundry-scented stick that I’ve been picking up on sale for nearly 10 years and scope out some aluminum-free options. Most often, they feature anti-bacterial elements like baking soda, plant extracts or even a cocktail of essential oils that promise to reduce the day’s odor. But, do any of the non-aluminum, mostly herbal scented deodorants actually work?

Depends on whether or not you’re a heavy sweater. If you hardly break a sweat from a moderate exercise class, a natural product just may work well enough. I tested seven aluminum-free formulas throughout my real-life workweek (think hour-long commutes on the congested 405; time spent in the Valley’s sticky, humid air;and a grueling flow yoga schedule) and I was generally thrilled with these finds:

Lavanila The Healthy Deodorant Solid StickThe best thing about the line is the floral, feminine scents like Vanilla Grapefruit. Technically, it’s a solid stick but when applied to the skin, the texture melts to into a thinner, cream-like form and then dries. It has tea tree oil and corn starch, which prevent the growth of odor-causing bacteria. It smells great, but didn’t provide enough antiperspirant action. It works well enough for a few hours if you don’t mind a second application.Overall verdict: Good stuff

Soapwalla Deodorant Cream Citrus
There is something odd about smearing a clay-like cream under your arms. Expect to factor in a few minutes of drying time–this one is a paste and will likely smear onto clothes. The product smells fresh–it’s definitely unisex–and is made from food-grade ingredients, so it’s ideal for sensitive skin that’s prone to rashes. A pea-sized dollop gets the job done.Overall verdict: Good stuff

Korres 24h Deodorant Protection with Equisetum ExtractThis Greek product didn’t leave a trace of whiteness despite its thick, dense texture. It’s 94% natural, uses equisetum (a grass-like plant with astringent properties) and was able to mostly cover unpleasant B.O. through the evening. It’s a good option for those who are not ready to commit to an all-green regimen.Overall verdict: Awesome

Schmidt Ylang-Ylang + Calendula DeodorantThis baking soda concoction provided pretty great protection when the temperatures hit 105°F last week. At the end of a 10-hour day, I still smelled like Ylang Ylang. A little goes a long way and worked to control any unpleasant odor, though it’s another one that might require a re-application. For its lasting power, Schmidt’s is practical and forgiving.Overall verdict: Awesome

Le Couvent des Minimes Everyday Deodorant with Alum StoneThis French, clear roll-on dates back 1862 and is, unsurprisingly, still a best seller. The French get it right again. The blood orange and rosemary oils make it a zesty summer alternative. The active ingredient is alum stone. It’s not industrial strength, but it’s seriously close to it.Overall verdict: Excellent

Acqua Di Parma Colonia Deodorant StickThis spendy, aluminum-free product has been around since 1916 and is for the lady (like me) who loves the scent of a man’s deodorant but doesn’t want a Speed Stick on her side of the bathroom. The musky scent is every bit a classic. It contains alcohol, but it keeps me dry for hours on end. Can’t. Get. Enough.Overall verdict: Fave!

The End of the Tour is the story of two novelists, the first who has become very famous very quickly, and the second whose greatest renown will derive from writing about the first. Over the course of a 1996 book tour they bond to whatever extent that two people sharing like sensibilities and aspirations to such different and unequal ends can, especially when the more celebrated is subject to the other’s interpretation and assessment; the brief “friendship” between Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky, interviewing Wallace for Rolling Stone, is built of empathy, paranoia, and agendas sycophantic and competitive. The movie stacks the deck slightly. Although Wallace was the most acclaimed American novelist of the 1990s and a literary phenomenon, he wasn’t a household name like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, whereas Lipsky was hardly unrecognized, his work having appeared in anthologies and on end-of-the-year lists (the Wallace feature would win a National Magazine Award and become a well-received book). But Wallace was certainly a blinding nova in the heat of which other novelists wilted, while the star was trying not to go blind from his own incandescence or crazy from the prospect of light’s inevitable lapse into dark.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies and directed by Sundance nominee James Ponsoldt, The End of the Tour is a terrific film, among the year’s best with its two-man tarantella of wall-to-wall talk—and I watched it through my fingers as though it were Mad Max. To any novelist in the audience, the film’s cavalcade of ego, doubt, insecurity, neurosis, narcissism, pettiness, false modesty, one-upmanship, intellectual arrogance, philosophical exhibitionism, semiconscious treachery, and seething-beneath-the-surface resentment may be more familiar than he or she can stand—feelings that would leave the stricken auteur of these last two overlong sentences, for instance, wondering whether to include them here at all, since they’re really about…me! Me, me, me, me, me, which is to say not only the me who’s been on a book tour but the me who, several years before my first published novel, profiled another novelist who was in the process of becoming well known. After the piece was published, I ran into the writer’s wife at a party and asked what she thought, whereupon she coolly appraised the wanna-be before her and answered, “Well, it’s more about you, isn’t it?” Given the nature of being a novelist, Lipsky’s encounter with and write-up of Wallace was bound to be as much about Lipsky; if every creative feat is driven by the artist’s conviction that what he has to say justifies interrupting everyone else’s markedly less significant life in order that they hear it, few endeavors are as psychologically claustrophobic as writing a novel. The novelist is possessed by a constant inner muttering that would be certifiable behavior but for its mediation by pen or laptop. The same private space in his head where stories reveal their secrets is also the rabbit hole to madness.

The result is that the novelist ceaselessly struggles not to have an adversarial relationship with his own creativity. Whoever said failure makes an artist better wasn’t an artist, but a corollary is true, which is that too much success too soon will mess you up, and in Wallace’s case this was another demon joining an already-growing legion. As portrayed by Jason Segel (in an Olympian leap from previous comedic work), the Wallace of The End of the Tour is so self-conscious that he can’t be sure anymore what the true self is that he’s conscious of, in the same way that if you look at an object long enough, eventually it resembles something else entirely. At that point somebody as brilliant and reflective as Wallace, prone to depression and self-destruction, questions reality and his place in it. Sometimes he wants the celebrity that he knows is ephemeral, sometimes he distrusts it, sometimes he’s only pretending he distrusts it. Wallace’s fame can’t even get him laid because, like every writer, he’s too busy overthinking himself into paralysis, wondering whether the mystery seductress likes him or likes “David Foster Wallace” and whether she can make the distinction any better than he can.

Shepherded to and from bookstores, hanging out at the mall together and going to movies and raiding convenience stores for junk food in The End of the Tour, Wallace and Lipsky still peer at each other from opposite sides of a divide that can’t be bridged, let alone removed. A journalistic interview is an artificial situation to begin with—the two men would never meet again—but more profound is the chasm of hopes between them, Wallace insisting he wants to be rid of his success, Lipsky desperately wanting (as most novelists would) a sliver of the success Wallace has. When an over-the-top New York review of Infinite Jest posits at the movie’s beginning that everyone else writing fiction might as well just give up, it also implicitly suggests—whether the reviewer knows it or cares—that Wallace might as well give up, too. A superb counterpart to Segel, Jesse Eisenberg is Lipsky, in a role whose torment is quieter and more repressed, his most revelatory moment coming early on when he makes the mistake of following the truly terrible advice that no writer’s girlfriend should make the mistake of giving: to stop begrudging Wallace as a rival and read him instead. Around what we imagine is page 400-and-something, we hear a stunned Lipsky murmur from behind the thousand-page magnum opus in his hands: “Shit.”

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Every thought and word that a novelist thinks or writes is part of that castle constructed from sands on the beach of Me, including the turret or rampart or moat he may have thought or written on behalf of someone or something else. Every sentence reveals the Me even as it may also reveal the Him or Her or It. I never met Wallace, but by all accounts it was indicative of a generosity he extended to anyone but himself when he sent a postcard with kind words about a novel (more me!) or showed up at a reading lurking in the shadows without introducing himself (me, but him, too); an otherwise gentle soul in a lifetime of pain, he committed his angriest act when he hanged himself on his patio in September 2008, a suicide particularly hostile to whichever loved one would be unfortunate enough to find him. When I began teaching fiction workshops 15 years ago, every young writer wanted to be Wallace in the same way that half a century before every young writer wanted to be Fitzgerald or Kerouac, every submission an ecstatic flurry of Infinite Jest’s notorious endnotes. Homages to Wallace’s revolutionary form, these submissions usually missed the point of his greater ecstasy, which was the cosmos broken down into words and thoughts, each constituting a tiny cosmos unto itself; in Wallace’s fiction every shard of existence is a thing of awful wonder. It was a wonder that couldn’t sustain an awful existence racked by whatever racked his, and which he escaped only by abdicating the magnum opus of Me for the endnote of oblivion.

Recreating a century-old journey, two brothers are currently driving a recently-restored 1915 Ford Model T from Detroit to San Francisco, with a stop in L.A. planned for next month.

Brothers Frank and Randy Book are currently in the midwest after departing the Henry Ford estate earlier this month. The Book brothers are tracing a journey their grandfather and great-uncle took with Edsel Ford (son of Henry) and a a few other pals exactly a century ago. The young men drove a small gaggle of cars, including a Model T, though not the one the Book brothers are driving, to the San Francisco international expo of 1915. The friends were promoting the cars, but also the joy of seeing America’s vast expanses by auto.

“It was the birth of the American road trip,” Mark Gessler, president of the Historic Vehicle Association, which organized the trip, told the Detroit Free-Press. “1915 was a watershed for auto travel in the United States. Europe was at war, the Lincoln Highway had just opened and the government encouraged people to see America first.”

The 3,500 mile, 1915 journey largely followed the National Old Trails Highway, a precursor to Route 66. The Books are mostly following their forefathers’ route, hitting places like Indianapolis, Dodge City, and Las Vegas. At a top speed of 35 mph, the Books won’t reach L.A.until August 7 or 8 and San Francisco until August 18.

Back in March, esteemed chef, restaurateur, and author Dan Barber transformed his New York City restaurant Blue Hill in into a three week-long pop up dedicated exclusively to kitchen scraps. Dubbed WastED, the hybrid ultra-luxe dinner series and hardcore conservation experience featured dishes like fried skate cartilage, stewed kale ribs, and a “juice pulp cheeseburger” made from the the discarded innards of a cold-pressed juicer. It boasted an all-star cast of guest chefs including Grant Achatz, Danny Bowein, Mario Batali, April Bloomfield, Dominique Ansel—the list goes on.

L.A. doesn’t have a slew of celebrity chefs chomping at the bit to dish out soiled beet green pistou. But, we may have something better: Executive chef Bryant Wigger of Wildcraft is using kitchen waste to make cheap and trendy cocktails for the Culver City restaurant’s new “scrappy hour.” Discounted alcohol and environmental consciousness is a winning combination every time.

From 4-7 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 4-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday all throughout August you can get your hands on one of three scrap-infused cocktails for $7 each. The Italian Stallion—a Mediterranean riff on a michelada—is rimmed with a spice blend made from leftover lemon and lime zest from the week’s service; the Riptide features tequila, cilantro, and pineapple muddled with discarded Fresno chile tops; and the Sweet Pea combines mint, lemon, and egg whites with pea shell-infused vodka.

Wigger has also developed a few new bar snacks to go along with your made-over cocktails. The lamb ribs are dusted with leftover garlic from dinner services that was dehydrated and pulverized, and the stray outer leaves of brusseles sprouts are turned into crispy, salty chips. The pasta malfatti—literally translated to “badly cut”—is made with the uneven ends of dough.

If you want to eat your kitchen scraps omakase-style, Wildcraft is also offering up a $10 “Pie of the Moment” featuring whatever’s in-season and would otherwise be in the trash.

The Honest Company, whose feel-good, eco-friendly products range from diapers to scented candles, announced today that it’s packing up (in cute, sustainable backpacks, we’re sure) and moving from Santa Monica to Los Angeles. Mayor Garcetti welcomed the business, which Jessica Alba founded with three partners in 2012, to the city with an announcement touting the hundreds of jobs the company will bring with it. City coucilmember Mike Bonin gave a cheer, too: “Smart, tech-savvy companies like The Honest Company are continuing to create good jobs as they move in to Playa Vista and I am very excited to see our vision for the community continue to be realized.”

The Honest Company launched a new line of backpacks in collaboration with backpack brand STATE.The new line of lunch boxes from The Honest Company was a joint effort with bag company SoYoung.

Alba’s brand is moving on to new projects, too. It recently paired with outside organizations to launch two new kids accessories: backpacks and lunch boxes. For each backpack purchased, the Honest Company will deliver a second pack filled with school supplies to an American child in need.

“The fact that I’m here isn’t because things are already changing,” said Cuban singer/songwriter Carlos Varela through an interpreter at the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival’s premiere of The Poet of Havana—Director Ron Chapman’s doc about the musician. “I’m here because for many, many years, there’s a lot of people have been pushing for me to be here and for you all to be there. It’s incredible that we have been working on this documentary for two and a half years and we never ever imagined what would be happening this week.” Varela was referring to the reparation of relations between the U.S. and Cuba (announced last year on December 17) and the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba last week. U.S. diplomat Conrad Tribble was in the front row at the screening (held at the Grammy Museum). Film participants Benicio del Toro and Jackson Browne also popped by to chat with everyone, and Verela and Browne performed in the Grammy museum’s intimate theatre after the film’s premiere.

“He’s an important voice from Cuba,” del Toro told me before the lights went down. “I’ve known him for awhile. He comes from a long line of musicians, folk/Latin American who write their lyrics and their lyrics tell stories.” Browne recalled the disappointment he felt when, at his induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, the seats he held for Varela at his table went empty due to the singer’s visa being denied.

After the film Varela kept it light. “On December 17, when the news came, out I received 200 phone calls,” he said. “Half of them were international calls. I was asleep. And one guy says, ‘Hey, turn on the T.V.’ I saw the President of my country speaking about relations starting today. I went to another channel and I see the President of the United States saying the exact same thing as the president of my country. I rubbed my eyes and said, I have to stop drinking.’”

Want to stay in, but eat like you’re out? Here, chef and writer Heather Platt shares recipes inspired by L.A.’s hottest restaurant dishes. We say “inspired by,” as these creations are Platt’s own and have been adapted for the home cook, using easy-to-access ingredients and techniques you can pull off in just about any kitchen—yes, even yours.

The Real Thing:If you’ve ever eaten the “Green Eggs and Ham” at Zoe Nathan and Josh Loeb’s Santa Monica Bakery Huckleberry, you not only understand why that line is so long, you’ll happily wait in it. The toasted house-made English muffins are topped with La Quercia prosciutto from Iowa, sunny side up eggs, delicate pesto, and a generous heap of arugula. The verdant brunch plate alone is enough to draw a crowd; but add in Zoe’s legendary morning pastries and you have a destination brunch spot worthy of long distance travel.

The Hack:Sometimes we just don’t have time to drive across town and wait in line. If you make this at home you won’t be able to enjoy all of the pastries—sure—but you will have lots of extra pesto to toss with pasta for dinner. In this recipe, we use store bought English muffins and prosciutto. The pesto can be simplified to a pistou (pesto without pine nuts or parmesan), for a lighter, but equally delicious sauce. You might miss that slice of Zoe’s blueberry cornmeal cake. But trust me, you won’t miss the traffic.

Begin by making the pesto. Use the side of your knife to crush the garlic cloves which will loosen the peel, making it easy to remove. Place the peeled cloves in a blender and blend until finely chopped. Add a sprinkle of salt, a handful of basil and the pine nuts (if using). Turn on the blender and begin adding the olive oil in a stream until the pine nuts are chopped. Turn off the blender and add the remaining basil one handful at a time followed by the parsley and lemon juice. Continue blending and pouring the olive oil until it is combined and not chunky. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the grated parmesan (if using). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

In a large skillet, over high heat, melt the butter. To avoid potential egg shell in your pan, crack the eggs into a separate small bowl. When the butter is foaming, gently pour the eggs into the hot pan. They should sizzle and turn white quickly. Turn the heat down to medium. The pan shouldn’t be so hot that it’s spitting butter. Tilt the pan so the hot butter cooks the tops of the eggs.

While the eggs are cooking, cut the English muffins in half and toast them until browned.

Place the toasted English muffins on two plates. Top each muffin half with one slice of prosciutto, then, using a spatula, place the sunny side up eggs onto each piece. Drizzle generously with pesto (or pistou) and top with a handful of arugula. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Talk about a fiesta! To celebrate Los Angeles magazine’s July issue cover story, “Taco City,” we’re throwing a Taco Tuesday of epic proportions. Wes Avila of Guerilla Tacos (also our July issue cover star) will join forces with Taco Maria’s Carlos Salgado (recently named Food & Wine magazine Best New Chef) and Petty Cash’s Walter Manzke (also of République) for a taco trifecta the likes of which the city has never seen.

The bash, which takes place from 7 to 9:30 p.m. on August 11, is an exclusive preview of the soon-to-open Arts District location of Petty Cash Taqueria, offering diners a sneak peak at Manzke’s new super-sized digs. Los Angeles magazine food editor Lesley Bargar Suter will be in attendance, as well as contributor and Latin food expert Bill Esparza and other members of the LAmag editorial team

A $45 ticket earns you two signature tacos from each of the chefs, as well as a brand new cocktail from bartenders Julian Cox and Erick Castro, plus a few more surprise nibbles (ahem, the best guacamole, period). Tax and gratuity are included so don’t sweat it. Space, however, is limited, so buy your tickets now, here!

It appears Ed Sheeran is trading in his guitar for an executioners axe. According to Billboard, the six-time Grammy nominee just secured a recurring role on the upcoming FX show The Bastard Executioner, written by Sons of Anarchy creator, Kurt Sutter. Sheeran has previously expressed his admiration for Sutter’s work, which eventually led the former to record a cover of Foy Vance’s “Make It Rain,” which was used in one of the final episodes of Sons of Anarchy.

On The Bastard Executioner, Sheeran will play the part of Sir Cormac, an “ambitious and deadly protégé of a high-ranking church elder.” The Bastard Executioner is set in medieval England and follows a former warrior who lays down his sword only to become a journeyman executioner. Joining Sheeran on the show are among others True Blood star Stephen Moyer, newcomer Lee Jones, Sons of Anarchy alum Katey Sagal, and Sutter himself, who is known to appear in peripheral roles on his own shows.

Chef Brian Malarkey’s popular seafood-centric restaurant Herringbone will open in Santa Monica this Saturday, August 1. This new location will soon be the concept’s only L.A. outpost—the Herringbone that opened at the Mondrian on the Sunset Strip last year is set to transition into a new Malarkey creation. The first of the trio debuted in La Jolla back in 2012.

The new seaside restaurant, located at the plaza of The Seychelle at Ocean Avenue South, will be helmed by AaronMitrano. The chef de cuisine—who worked most recently as the executive chef at The Horn in West Hollywood and spent time as Gordon Ramsey’s sous chef—will bring his own culinary spin to the Santa Monica menu.

Keeping with Malarkey’s “Fish Meets Field” credo, perhaps the most interesting addition is the Salt & Brine Bar: a mix-and-match array of seafood and charcuterie that will feature innovative dishes like uni with cucumbers and fermented chile, and octopus with piquillo peppers, olives, and saffron alongside standard-bearing plates of raw oysters and prosciutto.

“I am very excited to be working alongside Chef Malarkey and Chef Jordan in this awesome venture,” says Mitrano. “Being able to work with the best of what Southern California has to offer both from the land and the ocean is an amazing opportunity, and I look forward to serving the Santa Monica community.”

A selection of flatbreads rounds out the menu

The starter section of the menu is divided into “Hot Fare” and “Cold Fare” small plates. Think whole-fish ceviche colorfully accented with Fresno chilies and cilantro, and of course, poke—the seafood-darling-of-the-moment—will also be available in the form of albacore mixed with ginger, soy, nori, avocado, and spicy mayo. Hotter (literally) are the arancini, mussels tikka masala, and squash blossoms stuffed with shrimp and pork.

Roasted and grilled fish dishes make up half of a small list of main dishes, but the seafood wary can play it safe with vegetarian-friendly house-made pasta, slow-cooked short ribs, and roasted chicken. Stone-fired flat breads layered with mozzarella and veggie, seafood, and meat toppings round out the menu along with cleverly named cocktails (i.e. the Grow a Pear made with cucumber-infused gin, cilantro, jalapeño, St. Germain, and lemon) and a wine list that includes a relatively large collection of organic and bio-dynamic wines.

Herringbone Santa Monica will be open for dinner to start with brunch and lunch in the works.

Regime des Fleurs perfumes are handcrafted in Los Angeles from rare, natural, and widely-sourced ingredients, but the perfumers behind the brand draw inspiration from distant places and times–from Classical mythology to the painter Henri Rousseau to 19th Century Gothic literature.

The company was founded in L.A. by longtime friends Alia Raza and Ezra Woods in 2013. Their decision to start the project grew from theirmutual appreciation of antiquated opulence.

The sense of smell is known to be the strongest sense tied to memory, and Raza and Woods play with that fact by creating scents that feel at once familiar and new. The description of the scent freeworld includes, “The sparkling fizz of freedom/ under an imperial sky,” and is meant to evoke collective memories of 20th century America–youth, optimism, soda pop, pop art, the 50s, and the 80s. Although the perfumes reference Raza and Woods’ visual and literary inspirations, they’re not so heady that they can’t be worn every day.

The Regime des Fleurs bottles, which are designed by Raza and Woods, are objets d’art on their own. The painted bottles and caps are opaque, and come in dense shades of coral, copper, light turquoise, and aluminum. Each bottle is marked with a golden seal, a crest that’s stamped with the initials R and F. I keep my bottle of turquoise on my kitchen table, in a grouping of candles and flowers.

Regime des Fleurs’ perfumes are organized into three sets: the Lyrics, the Ballads, and the Epics. The Epics are the most complex perfumes of the tiers, including a perfume comprised of 80 ingredients (other naturally sourced perfumes tend to contain around 30 ingredients).

The delicacy of each perfume isn’t compromised by its complexity. The scents unfold and change ever so slightly on skin throughout the day, but their compositions maintain their balance. Each perfume can be worn alone or layered.

We asked Ezra and Alia a few questions about their craft:

Are the colors of the bottles meant to echo the scents that they hold? Alia Raza: Each bottle’s color or colors are specific to that fragrance. In some cases, the translation is literal. Our scent nitesurf is about neon orange blossoms and day-glo surfers, so it comes in a fluorescent orange bottle. Other times it’s more of a feeling or mood. The water/wood bottle is inspired by a painting by our friend Friedrich Kunath. [The painting] has a forest-y, watery feel.Ezra Woods: The bottles are meant to work with the scents held within them, so that the overall impression of the product becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Nitesurf references “the hot dry Santa Ana winds” and a moonlit Venice Beach. How does living and working in L.A. affect your creative process?Raza: I first came to L.A. from New York 10 years ago, and I was really taken with all the flowers and plants everywhere. Your barely see trees or flowers in New York, so coming here and suddenly being surrounded by orange blossoms and gardenias and honeysuckle and star jasmine was really moving! It’s definitely one of the reasons I live here now.Woods: California is a very majestic, intense place. I find it to be endlessly inspiring.

You both have backgrounds in visual fields, so you’re not typical perfumers. Regime des Fleurs perfumes are atypical in that they reference sculptures, poetry, and history. Are the scents intended to be worn by people that are especially drawn to the concepts behind the scents?Raza: The scents are intended for anyone who enjoys the way that the perfumes smell. [Ezra and I] share a lot of references, interests, and obsessions. We take what we do very seriously, and we want to create experiences that are layered, deep, and evocative not of anything literal but of things that haven’t been seen or done. Or smelled. It’s about creating an entire world within each bottle.Woods: Our stories and concepts might draw people in, but I hope that ultimately our perfumes enhance and deepen the experiences [that people have while wearing the scents].

How do you go about translating a specific historical, visual reference (i.e. a Paul Gaugin painting) into scent form? Raza: We do everything we can, from making moodboards to watching specific movies and listening to certain music to put us into a particular space. We’ll talk about [the concept], nonstop, for days or weeks. I’ll say, ‘If we’re going to make this tropical jungle floral scent, we have to read excerpts from Wide Sargasso Sea, because the whole book is so feverish and humid it’s like the smell of gardenias,” and then Ezra might say, “You know what that reminds me of?” and he’ll tell me about a couture collection from 40 years ago. And these images or discussions or movies or books remind us of certain ingredients and smells. And then we start creating a formula. Each scent gets adjusted many, many times.

Do you have a favorite artist?Raza: I like things that are romantic and moody but also clean. I don’t have a favorite, but I love Christian Schad, Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun, Agnes Martin, and John Singer Sargeant.Woods: I love very large Rothko paintings that make you feel like you are staring into the abyss. I get the same feeling from looking at those paintings that I get when I when I’m at very high places.

You even have a scent, mirror, that’s intended to evoke a reflection of a scent. How did you go about achieving this? Raza: We worked hard on that scent to make sure that none of the notes stuck out. Nothing [within the scent is] easily identified. People have a lot of trouble describing mirror. They have really disparate impressions of it, and we love that.Woods: It was all about the feel. We just kept asking each other, “Does this smell reflective?”

What’s next for Regime des Fleurs?Raza: Oh, so much! But immediately next? Home fragrance!Woods: Candles. More perfumes. Exciting collaborations.

“I never felt like there was much to lose.” That’s how Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, chalked up his meteoric rise in the entertainment industry when the media executive sat down to discuss his career—and his competition—with Giselle Fernandez this summer.

Over the past 15 years Sarandos has helped transform Netflix from a DVD rental service to an Internet television network with award-winning programming. He cut deals to launch House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, giving cable networks a run for subscribers and making binge-watching a thing. Just one reward? Critical acclaim. Netflix nabbed 34 Emmy Award nominations this year, a company record. With success, Sarandos’ ambition is growing; he says 13 original shows are going into production in 2015 and seven will debut before the year’s end.

In this rare on-camera Q&A, Sarandos opens up about reimagining Hollywood’s traditional TV business model; hiring comedian Chelsea Handler; refusing to reveal ratings for the network’s shows; being in power couple with his wife, former U.S. ambassador Nicole Avant; and what’s next for Netflix.

Can you imagine driving down Sunset and seeing the spellbinding psychedelic mural above? It once welcomed visitors to the Aquarius Theatre at 6230 Sunset Boulevard. The historic structure was painted for the opening of Hair in 1968. Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, and Sal Mineo caught performances of the play during its two-and-a-half year run from 1969-1971.

The theater had many lives before and after it was the Aquarius. It debuted as the Earl Carroll Theatre in 1938. Opened during the glittering Golden Age of Hollywood, it could hold 1,000 people. The extravagant supper club advertised THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRLS IN THE WORLD on a 20-foot high neon sign, and a facial portrait of entertainer Beryl Wallace—who dated the theater’s namesake, producer Earl Carroll—looked out from the theater’s facade toward Sunset. Over time, hundreds of movie stars inscribed their signatures on the building’s concrete blocks. One of the great Hollywood mysteries is the fate of all those signed slabs.

A vintage postcard of the Earl Carroll Theatre from the 1940s

Photograph courtesy Vintage Los Angeles Collection

Carroll and Wallace died in the crash of United Airlines Flight 624 in 1948. After their passing, the theater was sold, and by the early 1950s it had fallen on hard times. Las Vegas showman Frank Sennes reopened the venue in 1953 as a nightspot called Moulin Rouge. The popular TV game show Queen for a Day was broadcast from the club during part of the show’s ten-year run.

The Moulin Rouge in 1961

Photograph courtesy Vintage Los Angeles Collection

With the 1960s came a culture clash that pitted rock ‘n’ roll against jazz and easy listening. At the Moulin Rouge, rock prevailed. In 1965, American International Pictures filmed the historic Big TNT Show, which featured live performances by Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, The Byrds, Joan Baez, and Ike & Tina Turner at the venue. Phil Spector produced the show’s theme song.

The theater changed hands again in 1966 and was redubbed the Hullabaloo Club; that name lasted two years.

The Hullabaloo Club in 1966

Photograph courtesy Vintage Los Angeles Collection

In 1968 the venue became the Kaleidoscope, which was run by Canned Heat’s booking agent, John Hartmann (who’s brother was comedian Phil Hartman), and its manager, Skip Taylor. Canned Heat was the house band for a spell, but Jefferson Airplane performed on the club’s opening night, March 22, 1968. The Kaleidoscope’s mission was to replicate the success of San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditoriums by booking acts that were based in Southern California, like Love, Iron Butterfly, and Eric Burdon and the Animals. All sorts of hippie bands, including the Grateful Dead, played the Kaleidoscope during the summer of 1968. The hangout held movie nights, too, and the great Don Ellis Orchestra, a super-hip big band, performed on Wednesdays. Sadly, the venue was too small to stay afloat, and the Kaleidoscope closed before Labor Day of that year. The venue did, however, release some pretty amazing posters that are collectibles today.

A talented young set designer, Michael Baugh, stepped in next and transformed the club into the Aquarius Theatre. Under his direction, crews worked around the clock for two months redesigning and reconstructing the venue’s interior to ready it for a production of Hair.

In addition, they replaced the portrait of Beryl Wallace with a wraparound mural painted by The Fool, a collective of Dutch and English artists best known for creating a mural on the Beatles’ Apple Boutique in London. In psychedelic style, the theater’s painting depicts the coming of the Age of Aquarius. Nearly overnight the mural-wrapped theater became a late 1960s Hollywood landmark.

Hair played six nights a week. On Mondays, the venue was rented out by Elektra Records, which put on affordable concerts. The label’s most famous group, the Doors, recorded bits of their performances at the Aquarius for the album “Absolutely Live.” Frank Zappa, the Mothers of Invention, and Jethro Tull played at the Aquarius on March 31, 1969.

Unfortunately, the Aquarius Theatre’s walls were not primed properly before the psychedelic murals were painted. After just a year and a half, the portion along the building’s west wall began to peel. It had to be completely painted over in 1971.

In the mid-’70s, the theater became a go-to location for live concerts taped for TV. Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert filmed there, and so did Star Search for some seasons. The theater was renamed the Chevy Chase Theater in the fall of 1993 and began serving as the venue for Fox’s unsuccessful late-night show The Chevy Chase Show. Nickelodeon acquired the theater in 1997 and still owns it today.

Nickelodeon Studios in 2014

Photograph by Alison Martino

On a recent walk around the building, I poked behind some trees and found the plaque, pictured below, from the Aquarius days that reads, “F.D.C. SERVES AQUARIUS THEATRE.” (F.D.C. stands for Fire Department connection.) I was astonished the marker survived all these years. It reminded me how much of the past is hidden along the streets of Los Angeles; little treasures like this have been left behind for us to discover.

An Aquarius Theater plaque from 1969

Photograph by Alison Martino

Alison Martino is a writer, television producer and personality, and L.A. pop culture historian. She founded the Facebook page Vintage Los Angeles in 2010. In addition to CityThink and VLA, Martino muses on L.A’s. past and present on Twitter and Instagram

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The dashing silent film-era actor was beaten to death in the bedroom of his Studio City home in 1968. Twelve years later another actor, Ryan Gene Kelley, moved into the same hacienda. “He had it furnished like the day Novarro was killed,” says historian Ken Schessler, who visited Kelley at home in 1980. “He was dressed like Novarro.” Kelley did not share his idol’s place of death, however. A shot to the chest killed the 35-year-old in Mid Wilshire in 1981.

Slap on your grooviest threads, take a nose dive in a field of flowers, and switch your Google Glasses to kaleidoscope mode. L.A. Psych Fest, a music festival dedicated to spacey tunes and mind-bending ditties, just announced the line-up for the fourth annual edition, kicking off September 19 at the Echo & Echoplex. It’s a doozie: Hippie stereotypes aside, this seriously one of the most interesting happenings on the cultural calendar.

Since 2012, L.A. Psych Fest has introduced audiences to the weird and wonderful niche genre of psychedelic music, from ’60s inspired rock to ambient electro, and the fest always manages to put together an excellent cocktail of newcomers on the scene, backed by a handful of big names. Check out the complete line-up below:

Los Angeles has a love/hate relationship with cars. Yes, there’s the lure of the open road and driving off into the sunset, but there’s also the soul-crushing commute. Many of the best American writers have explored that love/hate relationship in their work, as Atlas Obscura writer Richard Kreitner’s intricate interactive map of non-fictional road trips proves.

Kreitner, a self-described “freak for the American road trip,” plotted the routes from a dozen books that feature cross-country travel (think Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Mark Twain’s Roughing It). After tracking down over 1,500 locations, he enlisted graphic designer Steven Melendez to create an exhaustive map guaranteed to make road trip lovers drool. Tour Los Angeles through the words of Jack Kerouac, Tom Wolfe, and Ted Conover, authors who have the ability to turn our city and its surrounding areas into something both magical and mythic.

You’ll have to head to Atlas Obscura to see the chartogram in its full glory, but check out a few screenshots for yourself below—and, if you’re inspired to embark on your own epic road trip, don’t miss our 2014 guide.

Just ask Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema, who recently attempted to organize New York’s taco scene with the rather ridiculous subhead “L.A.’s Got Nuttin’ On Us!” As ambitious as his list was, what followed was a rather strange collection of tacos that don’t really exist in name, redundancies, and general misinformation. (I’ll skip going into detail for brevity’s sake). More concerning, though, was the fact that other New York journalists have been eager to equate the city’s rather modest taco scene with L.A.’s as well, as we saw with Ligaya Mishan’s New York Times piece last year. Maybe they simply don’t realize how vast our city’s taco culture actually is.

That’s why I decided to create L.A.’s first ever taco encyclopedia, or Tacopedia, to serve as a comprehensive guide for the many style of tacos that exist in L.A. Most are regional styles that are officially recognized in Mexico, while others are more modern styles influenced by Mexican-American culture. Either way, they’re all delicious.

Ensenada Fish Tacos
Not only does L.A. have an abundance of Baja-style fish tacos, we also have the best in Ricky’s Fish Tacos, prepared with Baja ingredients by Ensenada native, Ricky Piña. In addition to his superb beer-battered fish tacos he does crunchy shrimp tacos, too, just like every stand in Ensenada. Another required stop is newcomer, Mi Ensenada, the new fish taco king of Whittier Bl.

Marlin Tacos
Hailing from the states of Nayarit and Sinaloa, these tacos are filled with stewed and smoked marlin, then toasted. The best are at Nayarit seafood specialist, Coni’Seafood.

Tacos Gobernador
Speaking of Sinaloa, South Gate’s El Perihuete(a small local chain) makes a nice gobernador, named after a governor in Sinaloa who thought that a taco with Pacific shrimp, melted cheese, tomatoes, peppers, and onions was good politics. That gets our vote anyday.

Birria Tacos
Roasted goat tacos served with a rich broth made from the goat’s drippings. Popular in Jalisco, and the state of Zacatecas, which is the region where third generation goat specialist, Birrieria Flor del Rio hails from.

Barbacoa TacosIn L.A. you can sample pit-roasted lamb prepared in the style of Mexican states such as Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Puebla, Capulhuac, Edo de Mexico, Oaxaca, Hidalgo, and Texcoco, which is represented by the best barbacoa purveyor in the U.S., Aqui es Texcoco. Our city also has a third generation barbacoa master at Gish Bac, who prepares the region’s signature goat barbacoa from the Mercado de Tlacolula, in Oaxaca. For Guerreran-style beef barbacoa, go to the Tamales Elena truck for a tender beef taco with ridiculously flavorful broth. You can find mouthwatering chicken barbacoa—also from Guerrero—on weekends at El Gallo Bakery.

Carne Asada Tacos
Northern Baja rules here in L.A. Most renown are Mexicali Taco Co.’s grilled steak tacos, wrapped in flour tortillas due to the Sonoran influence in Mexicali. Find them at stands like Tacos Los Poblanos too—these are run by Pueblans, but they represent an army of professional traveling Pueblan taqueros, or taco masters, hailing from Izucar de Matamoros, Puebla who prepare charchoal-grilled Tijuana-style carne asada topped with a covering of creamy avocado on a corn tortilla that’s wrapped in a conical shape, which can be found on streets from L.A. To Cabo.

Tacos al PastorTacos Leo is the benchmark spot in L.A. for Mexico City-style marinated pork tacos that are cut from a vertical spit and plated with sliced pineapple. These taqueros are professionals who have worked in some of Mexico City’s famed al pastor taquerias. We also have adobada, the regional style of al pastor from Baja California, which is served with creamy guacamole instead of pineapple.

Tacos ArabesNote to NYC: Tacos Arabes must use pan arabe (pita bread style tortilla), which you will only find at places like Los Originales Tacos Arabes de Puebla. Puebla’s famous taco comes with marinated pork cut from a vertical spit, chipotle sauce, and the pan arabe, which the Villegas family sources from Puebla. No pan arabe. No taco arabe.

Tacos PlacerosA specialty of Puebla (not Morelos) these are fully loaded tacos de guisado layered with a variety of toppings. Cemitas Poblanas Mi Magdalena makes a two-handed taco with cactus, cured beef, Oaxacan cheese and vegetables that resemble the ones found in Atlixco, Puebla.

Tacos al Vapor (steamed tacos)
Most of our Central Mexican tacos al vapor spots like Tacos Al Vapor El Canelo feature all cuts of beef head like cheeks, lips, brains, eyes, nerve, and more—these are also known as tacos de cabeza, or head. You’ll also find tacos de cabeza made with pig head at Oaxaca on Wheels from San Pedro Huiztepec, Oaxaca. This is all one style–each cut doesn’t get it’s own category–Mexican rules, dude!

Tacos de Canasta (basket tacos)
Another form of steamed tacos, which are naturally steamed in a basket, are the speciality at Vernon’s El Atoron from Jalisco. These tacos are defined by the way they are traditionally prepared, using sparse fillings like beans, chicharron, and potatoes with chorizo which sweat rich flavors into the corn tortilla.

Tacos de Guisado (stew tacos)
Regional stews, braises, and just about anything else (both vegetarian and meat) are served on a corn tortilla in this broad category found all over Mexico, especially Mexico City. Find them in abundance at Loteria Grill—I recommend the mushroom with epazote. Guisados, which now has three locations in L.A., is equally famous for their stew tacos.

Tacos de CarnitasIn Los Angeles you can find true regional versions of carnitas from Mexico City (at Tacos Los Güichos) and from Michoacan, but we also happen to have a 53-year carnitas artisan, Romulo Acosta from Guanajuato, trained in Mexico and making carnitas at his family run Carnitas El Momo truck, that are as good as finest in Mexico.

Tacos de Fritanga (fried tacos)
A fixture of the L.A.’s late night taco culture these taco stands feature a stainless steel disc with a convex center slowlying frying hog’s maw, tripe, brisket, longaniza sausage, and more, in lard and the meat’s own fat. They are seared in the center prior to serving to give them a bit of crispiness. The stands also have steam tables to cook more delicate cuts like tongue and brains. Fritanga tacos are big in D.F. and Jalisco, among other states, but like one of my favorite spots on Florence and Avalon, the L.A. vendors are mostly from Jalisco.

GringasNamed for the white flour tortilla, this is a delicious plate of al pastor and cheese melted into a flour tortilla. I like Tacos Cuernavaca, which also does a nice taco acorazado and is an all-around top regional Mexican food truck in L.A.

Taco de AlambreThese are Mexican hash tacos, literally wire tacos, which can be found at many Oaxacan restaurants like Sabores Oaxaqueños. You order a plate of tortillas for fixing your own tacos using a sauteé of Oaxacan cuts like tasajo (cured beef), cecina (pork in adobo), or chorizo mixed with Oaxacan cheese, peppers, onions, and if you want, some bacon. Try the 3 different alambres at Tacos Cuernavaca.

Tacos de ChilorioSpicy pork tacos. You can get a true taste of Sinaloa at El Sinaloense with an order of chilorio, a family-style serving of spiced pork hash that is spooned into flour tortillas with some frijoles puercos to form DIY tacos.

BurritosTacos de harina, or tacos served in flour tortillas, in northern Mexico are called burritos, and there’s no better place to get them than at Burritos La Palma, a chain from the Central Mexican state of Zacatecas, where a deep flavored, stewed beef birria in a homemade flour tortilla is one of the greatest simple pleasures L.A. has to offer.

MulitasComprised of grilled and roasted meats, melted cheese, and pico de gallo or other condiments sandwiched in between two corn tortillas. Find them at one of the several El Flamin’ Taco truck locations, or try a regional version from Michoacan called chavindecas at Birrieria Apatzingan. New Yorkers might call this a Mexican pizza.

Korean TacosTwo words: Roy Choi. Los Angeles is the undisputed birthplace of the Korean taco, and while it has inspired many imitators, the Kogi truck remains the Mecca for Korean taco lovers worldwide.

North African TacosNo, we’re not going to stack the deck with every international truck in town that makes a taco, but what chef Farid Zadi is doing with his Revolucionario L.A. Food concept warrants its own category–North African stews and braises are a natural on a tortilla. After all, shakshouka is North Africa’s huevos rancheros.

Panuchos and SalbutesChichen Itza, which features the tri-state cuisine of the Yucatan peninsula (they even have a cookbook) has achieved a true mix of tradition with modern refinement that few Mexican restaurants in the U.S. can claim. Their panuchos (bean-stuffed tortillas with turkey and vegetables), and salbutes (soft tortillas with turkey and vegetables) are served with the tender-braised turkey. On Sundays you can get tacos de lechon, or suckling pig, a popular item in the Yucatan as well as my family’s home state of Aguascalientes.

Tacos de Tripa de LecheA northern delicacy of caramelized chitterlings soaked in milk, boiled, and crisped on a flat top grill is found most commonly at taquerias in Sonora, Coahuila, Sinaloa, but can pop-up most anywhere in Mexico. At Gallardo’s Tacos you can ask for it to be cooked tender or extra crispy, bien doradito, for a special taste to please late night taco connoisseurs.

QuesatacoEagle Rock’s Cacao Mexicatessen is a taco lover’s playground, with creative weekly specials like their Tijuana-style quesataco, originally created by contemporary taqueria, Tacos Salceados. Grated cheese is melted on a griddle and rolled over to form a pocket to insert the ingredients, then the whole thing is placed atop a tortilla.

Tacos de Cochinita PibilMade with marinated pork cooked in banana leaves, you’ll find these at Yucatecan restaurants across L.A., including two which are the best in the U.S. We also have chef Rocio Camacho, who makes great dishes from all over the south of Mexico at Rocio’s Moles de los Dioses. Her cochinita pibil tacos are addictive and dripping with a rich, complex recaudo rojo (achiote marinade).

FlautasFlute-length fried rolled tortillas filled with meat. There are many places for this favorite Mexican antojito in L.A., but Flautas by Mexican celebrity chefs, Jaime Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu (La Casita Mexicana, Mexicano) has a whole menu dedicated to this deep fried treat. Taquizas Gilberto in Valinda serves an old school goat birria flauta that is stunning.

ChalupasSmall lard-fried tortillas with salsa, vegetables, and scraps of meat. Chalupas are popular in Puebla and Oaxaca, and always a great order at Guelaguetza, which uses quality tortillas to enjoy with either a tart green or fruity red salsa.

Tacos de MixioteThese are tender tacos are made with meat steamed in parchment paper wraps. In L.A., you can get southern lamb barbacoa in restaurants, street stands, trucks, and even backyards, and many times you’ll find bundle of mixiotes filled with lamb or even rabbit. Chef Roberto Berrelleza isn’t from the south but he comes from a time when the grand ladies of Mexican cuisine like chef Patricia Quintana took traditions like mixiotes and served them on white tablecloths. Berrelleza’s Babita in San Gabriel still executes a fine lamb shank mixiote for making tacos.

Tacos de CazuelaChef Rocio Camacho has brought a special taste of Oaxaca to her newly opened Rocio’s Mexican Kitchen—a selection of Oaxacan stews served in handmade tortillas speckled with the herb, chaya. Her bright stew of tongue in a green salsa will take you back to a sunny morning in Oaxaca, perusing a selection of mouthwatering stews in clay casserole dishes, a spicy reminder that Oaxaca is no slouch when it comes to tacos.

Tacos Tuxpeñoss
Although related to tacos de canasta (aka tacos al vapor and tacos sudados), these steamed tacos from the State of Colima served at Raspados Nayarit, deserve a special mention here. First the tortillas are fried in lard mixed with chile guajillo, giving them a reddish-orange color, then they’re steamed with potato and chorizo or chicken—they’re one of the unique offerings at this Lincoln Heights raspados shop, giving tribute to the regional flavors of the state of Colima as well as their home state of Nayarit.

Tacos de Relleno NegroOne of our veteran Mexican bakeries which offers a wide selection of provincial tamales on weekends, Flor de Yucatan Bakery also serves authentic cochinita pibil, and a delicious relleno negro, a Yucatecan dish of turkey simmered in a recaudo negro, a dark marinade from the Yucatan Peninsula.

Kosher TacosTacos can be enjoyed in our Kosher corridor at Mexikosher, with Mexico City chef Katsuji Tanabe serving rabbi-approved tacos such as brisket and duck carnitas with spicy harissa salsa. Just don’t plan on any kosher tacos on Saturdays!

Tacos DoradosGolden-fried tacos. Start with the classic potato taco, fried with a sealed tortilla, from Tortas Ahogadas Ameca, which highlights the cuisine of Ameca, Jalisco and then head down to Boyle Heights for the award-winning shrimp taco dorado, drowned in salsa at Mariscos Jalisco, whose coveted taco has been copied by more than a dozen other L.A. trucks and restaurants.

Puffy TacosWhittier is the place for a taste of Tex-Mex at Arturo’s Puffy Tacosfor their fried, puffed tortillas topped with picadillo or carne guisada, lettuce, and shredded yellow cheese. You can also get an off-menu puffy taco from one of L.A.’s best chefs, Josef Centeno at Bar Amá.

Breakfast TacosExcellent Texas-Style breakfast tacos from a real Texan, Briana Valdez, are the specialty at Home State with delectable items likeneches, a filling taste of scrambled eggs, beans, and cheese.

Hardshell TacosThe crunchy taco? You’ll find these across the country, but the zealous followers of local legends Tito’s Tacos andHenry’s Tacosknown that Los Angeles is the original home of this Americanized favorite.

Soul Food TacosMost famously available at Sky’s Gourmet Tacos, this style combines flavors of African-American soul food—fillings like ground turkey, yam and rice, or even crawfish, covered with tangy Caribbean-style hot sauce and shredded yellow cheese—and stuffs them between two grilled corn tortillas. Visit Original Bill’s Taco House in South Central, and you can get gravy on your tacos too.

TaquitosRolled, fried tacos filled with meat (similar to flautas). In 1934, the U.S. taco craze began at El Cielito Lindo on historic Olvera Street. It was that runny, avocado sauce created by Aurora Guerrero perhaps, but soon after Cielito Lindo opened taquitos spread across L.A. and across the country.

Tacos a la PlanchaYou’ve had these before–a half-dozen or so different selections of proteins (carnitas, al pastor, carnitas, pollo, buche, lengua, etc.) all cooked on a flat top grill–most of the time–then topped with onions, cilantro, salsas, and maybe some pico de gallo. You line up behind hipsters and chipsters in Highland or Echo Park for these after hours. It’s the type of domesticized taco you’ll find on almost every block in parts of L.A., provided you show up a the correct hour.

Mexican-American TacosGourmet outfits like Soho Taco and Mondo Taco have raised the level of the street taco, using handmade tortillas and fresh local ingredients to create Mexican-American tacos. At his roving taco stand Soho Taco chef Gabe Zambrano grills marinated shrimp just enough to provide the perfect snap when you bite into the taco, then dress it with chipotle crema, and yes, some mango salsa.

Tacos CaliforniosFor chef-driven tacos, check out the modern taqueros of Alta California cuisine. Chefs like Wes Avila (Guerilla Tacos), Ray Garcia (FIG), the family at Cacao Mexicatessen, Josh Gil and Daniel Snukal (Tacos Puntas Cabras), Ricardo Diaz (Colonia Taco Lounge), and Carlos Salgado (Taco Maria) grew up eating and making Mexican cuisine with their families and combined that experience with professional chef training—formally and informally—to create tacos that features an abundance of local ingredients which evoke both the flavors of California and Mexico. Chef David Chang recently said that Avila will “change the way people look at Mexican cuisine”, and chef Guillermo Berestain of Pangea, the first modern Mexican cuisine restaurant in Mexico, will feature Guerrilla Tacos at his culinary event this October.

In other words, there has never been a better time to be a taco lover in L.A.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/tacopedia-a-complete-taco-encyclopedia-of-l-a/feed/3Check Out the New Expressway to Disney Hall, the Broadhttp://www.lamag.com/driver/check-out-the-new-expressway-to-disney-hall-the-broad/
http://www.lamag.com/driver/check-out-the-new-expressway-to-disney-hall-the-broad/#commentsSat, 25 Jul 2015 00:13:45 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=484830

Metro is in the middle of constructing five rail lines, one of which is a new underground light rail line through Downtown. The Regional Connector will connect the Gold, Blue, and Expo lines, eliminating transfers and allowing direct rides from Santa Monica to East L.A., and Long Beach to Azusa.

The approximately-two mile train line will also create three new stations in DTLA—it will replace a currently-operating above-ground station in Little Tokyo with a subway stop, as well as opening a stop in the Civic Center and Bunker Hill. The latter station will be at 2nd and Hope streets, just behind Disney Concert Hall and the soon-to-open Broad Museum.

The odd sloping of Bunker Hill initially meant transit riders would ascend to street level and then have to trudge uphill to reach the front of the concert hall and museum. Thankfully, Metro addressed that problem by planning an elevated walkway that will connect commuters directly to the cultural attractions. Just ride that elevator, walk a half-block, and you’re there! The Broad will be free—save for parking—so getting there by transit equates to very cost-effective day of fun. You’ll just have to wait a few more years to take advantage of this station; the Regional Connector is scheduled to open in 2020.

Last week U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in Long Beach seized a shipment of counterfeit Hermès belts worth $3.2 million. The cache of nearly 4,000 leather belts had come from China. They were listed as “plastic besoms” on the ship’s manifest to avoid detection. “These aren’t cheap knock-offs,” says Jaimie Ruiz, CBP public affairs director. “Anyone with an untrained eye would be fooled.” The belts are part of a new generation of counterfeit goods, offering much more convincing copies of products. The Hermès belts featured the French brand’s logo stamped into the back of the leather belts and engraved on the buckles. The belts even came in near perfect replicas of the company’s signature orange and black boxes.

“China is by far the biggest culprit in shipping counterfeit goods into the Long Beach seaport,” says Jeff DeHaven, Section Chief at CBP, Long Beach. “And currently, Long Beach is the most used port for counterfeit shipments in the whole of the U.S.”

With containers arriving every six seconds searching every vessel isn’t feasible. “If we halted trade to search every container the U.S. economy would collapse,” says Ruiz. The CBP has confiscated an abundance of knock offs of handbags and footwear pretending to belong to luxury brands like Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Ferragamo, and Michael Kors. The largest bust in recent history at the Long Beach seaport involved counterfeit Hermès handbags with a domestic value of $138 million plus. The CBP enlists an outside contractor to destroy all of the fakes they’ve seized.

“There’s this perception that the sale of counterfeit goods is a victimless crime,” says Ruiz. “But counterfeits cost a lot when someone buys them. For one, sales aren’t taxed, which means no revenue for schools, roads, or hospitals. Also, we know the revenue for many of these products is going to transnational terrorist groups. The money is going to fund our enemies. And if you were to see where these fake goods are made, you’d be horrified—they use child labor, unsafe chemicals.”

Ruiz implores shoppers to pay attention to three things when purchasing a luxury product— where you’re buying it from, how much you’re paying for it, and if it comes in packaging? “Most counterfeiters don’t pay attention to packaging,” says Ruiz. “And when you buy online, you can’t be certain where those goods came from—it’s buyer beware.”

A big part of the problem though is convincing people to stop purchasing knock offs. “People want to walk around with an object that gives them high fashion status,” says Ruiz. “Counterfeits are shiny and attractive, but they have a dark side.”

Each Friday, the Digest surveys the burgeoning L.A. restaurant scene and compiles a list of the newest, most hyped and heralded restaurants in town this instant. Whether big or small, near or far, these are the restaurants that have people talking—us among them. Snag a seat at these hotspots while you still can.

1. CassiaWe were crushed when Brynt Ng’s Spice Table closed in DTLA almost two years ago (to make way for a subway station). Finally, we have a reprieve: Cassia, his new Santa Monica spot, is now in soft-open mode. A collaboration between Ng, his wife Kim Luu-Ng, Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, Cassia has the chilled seafood bar and charcuterie plates you’d expect from a French brasserie along with Ng’s take on Southeast Asian specialties, like kaya toast, jellyfish salad, and pot-au-feu, what Ng calls “a precursor to pho” that includes short ribs, bone marrow, and veggies. Zoe are Laurel Almerinda are doing the desserts.

2. Hatchet HallWe may finally be at a point where Brian Dunsmoor and Jonathan Strader can no longer be referred to as “the guys from Hart & the Hunter.” At Hatchet Hall—situated in the grand Culver City space that was formerly home to Waterloo & City—chef Dunsmoor takes on a manly hunter-fisher menu heavy with game (grilled rabbit, tea-smoked duck, roasted game hen), as well as local stone crab, ridgeback prawns, oysters, and market produce. The through line is the wood-fired grill that lends a smoky char to most dishes. Take a seat at the “Old Man Bar” for a root beer G&T.

3. Broken Spanish
It’s fitting that the former home of Jon Sedlar’s Rivera—which brought modern Mexican cuisine to the forefront in 2009—is where chef Ray Garcia is now serving up his own contemporary take on the foods of his heritage. Heirloom corn tortillas come smeared with beans or what the chef calls carnitas fat. The same pedigreed masa forms the bulk of tamales stuffed with lamb neck and oyster mushrooms or peas, favas, and the herb hoja santa. There’s a whole slow-roasted lamb’s draped in pickled onion and cabbage, but also a version of a chile relleno, stuffed with kale, lemon, and sauerkraut. How perfectly L.A.

4.Rice BarWith Rice Bar, Santos Uy (owner of Papilles and Mignon) and Charles Olalia (Patina and Terranea Resort’s mar’sel) have brought a new star to DTLA’s burgeoning restaurant row on 7th Street. They’ve also added another notch in the belt to the city’s growing Filipino food scene. Get familiar with the Asian nation’s cuisine with Rice Bar specials like thick red sausage slices with pickled papaya and a fried egg on a bed of heirloom rice. A slice of Manila in the Financial District.

5. The Arthur JDavid LeFevre’s latest addition to the Manhattan Beach dining scene is the chef’s take on a retro steak house. Wet and dry-aged USDA Prime and Certified Angus beef cooked over wood fire form the centerpiece of a menu that includes chef-driven on other staples (think a yuzu kosho butter steak topper, Emmental popovers, and even Swedish meatballs). A classically inspired cocktail list lubricates the throwback Beach Cities’ vibe.

6. MaréHidden in a small space behind Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese is the newest project from chef Eric Greenspan, an intimate European bistro called Maré. Pass through the sandwich shop up front to enjoy a quaint patio and dishes like clams in vadouvan green apple broth, fried smelt, and skirt steak with chimichurri sauce. The menu is as compact as the space, but packs a variety of bold flavors.

7. BierBeisl ImbissBernhard Mairinger is introducing Downtown diners to his unique take on traditional Austrian cuisine. After his first restaurant—the original BierBeisl in Beverly Hills—shuttered in early 2014, Mairinger decided to revive the concept with a more casual, sausage-centric menu (In German, imbiss refers to a type of small food cart). The menu boasts a litany of Austrian sausages, beers, schnitzels, and, if you happen to be taller than six-foot-eight Mairinger, the food is on the haus.

8. Jon & Vinny’sOne of the most anticipated openings of the past few weeks was Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s all-day Italian restaurant on Fairfax, and we’re still excited. The menu focuses on classic red-sauce fare, including crisp-crust pizza, fresh pasta with bolognese, and meatballs. There’s tiramisu for dessert. Tucked behind the dining room is where you’ll find Helen’s, a small wine shop.

9. Simbal
L.A.-native Shawn Pham returns from a four-year sojourn in Vietnam to open Simbal in Little Tokyo. Sweetbreads glazed in fish sauce and a short rib pot pie perfumed with lemongrass an annatto reflect Pham’s pedigree, which includes stints at Sona, Craft, and the French Laundry. Fermented tofu-marinated duck and tamarind fish soup bobbing with far-flung aromatics like sawtooth herb and rice paddy herb speak to his time in the Far East. Look forward to sherry cocktails and tropical sweets.

10. SambarAkasha Richmond, chef and owner of Culver City’s Akasha, has expanded next door to recently vacated Ford’s Filling Station space to launch her new Indian fusion concept, which blends house-made curries and regional dishes from the subcontinent with lighter Californian fare. Expect lots of action from the kitchen’s wood-powered tandoori oven.

The Japanese word kimono translates to “thing to wear,” and at the moment, kimonos are just the thing to wear. The slinky, sumptuous robes have been around since the 5th century. Though they’re now treated as everyday-wear in Japan, kimonos are still worn for special occasions like weddings and birthdays.

In the last few years kimonos have been re-appropriated and knocked off by slews of fast-fashion companies, but high-quality kimonos are making a resurgence. This weekend, L.A. is getting a custom kimono shop: Open the Kimono opens this Sunday on Abbot Kinney.

The company is the brainchild of Ibby Hartley, the former designer of Joie, and Lise Matthews, a Venice-based architect. Matthews has been sewing Yukata-style kimonos to gift to her family and friends for years. This year, she and Hartley decided to transform the kimono-crafting into a professional venture. Each of the new brand’s kimonos is one-of-a-kind and made from rayon challis, which is closely related to silk. Shoppers can expect traditional cuts and a slight California design influence–everything is made in Venice.

Stop by the Abbot Kinney store this Saturday from 3 to 7 p.m. to catch the launch party. After that, Open the Kimono will be open Tuesdays through Sundays, from 12 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Turn down the lights in here, baby. Kanye West and 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen’s nine-minute long video installation, All Day/I Feel Like That, makes its U.S. debut at LACMA tomorrow. McQueen, who directed the project, apparently gets along well with the erratic rapper, if a pages-long chat between the two for Interview magazine is any proof. The installation is a music video mash-up of Kanye’s “All Day” with the as yet unreleased “I Feel Like That” (from his upcoming album, SWISH). Why the large-scale reveal? Because Kanye.

Based on a leaked video from the premier of All Day/I Feel Like That at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the film features Ye prancing around, looking wearily at the camera, and generally balling hard in an abandoned building at Chatham Dockyard in England. Hoping for flamethrowers? Looks like you’ll be disappointed. Hoping to see a pair of adidas YEEZY Boost 750s in action? You’re in luck.

Ercavio Rosado Tierra de Castilla 2014 SpainThis Rose comes from high altitude, low yielding vineyards and is made from Spain’s leading grape, Tempranillo. The high altitude of the vineyards help to keep things cool during the growing year and thus preserves the acidity: the key component to making crisp refreshing Rose. Definitely one of our favorites every summer.

Famiglia DeRose Chianti 2012 ItalyThis wine is the jam! The perfect pasta pairing from one of Italy’s most quinessential wine regions, Chianti. The grape Sangiovese is king here. A thirst quenching summery red with just a little bit of mouthfeel and structure to give it a nice backbone and solid acidity to keep it light on it’s feet.

Monte Das Promessas Lisboa 2012 PortugalAre you ready for a mouthful? Here we go, let’s practice our Portugese… This wine is a blend of Castelao, Tinta Roriz, Touriga Nacional, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Okay, the last two are french but you get the idea. This wine comes from central Portugal, the area around Lisbon, and is definitely going to be the fullest of the four tonight. Great to pair with a nice juicy burger, this wine has beautiful dark berry fruit and a subtle hint of spice. Ride on!

It’s a fairly natural occurrence for chefs to leave their restaurant posts, even if the both the restaurant and chef are at the top of their game. But it’s never easy to hear for us diners. Case in point: Faith & Flower executive chef Michael Hung, who was handpicked by Dave Bernahl and the Coastal Luxury Management team to open their first Los Angeles restaurant, is leaving for greener pastures. Hung will be gone by mid-August, and the hunt for a new chef has already commenced.

“I’m extremely proud of the work we’ve done with Michael over the past two years,” Bernhal says. “With success comes new opportunities, and his transition has been in the works. We’re looking forward to watching Michael’s talent continue to grow, while at Faith & Flower we’re excited about what’s next for the restaurant.”

From the day it opened, Faith & Flower has garnered praise from food-lovers and critics alike (it was one of our 10 Best New Restaurants of the Year in 2014 and made Esquire’s annual list, among other accolades). Hung’s deep, soulful flavors (kimchi deviled eggs!) and impeccable technique are just two reasons why the restaurant got noticed, but also for also for the fantastic cocktail program, which was started by Michael Lay, who’s now at Broken Spanish, and carried on with aplomb by Edwin Osegueda. And Jared Hooper’s eclectic wine list, which continues to shine.

But there was a lot of nasty hubbub around Faith & Flower and Coastal Luxury Management over the last year, which includes lawsuits, buyouts and general ownership issues (Bernahl and CLM retain full ownership of the restaurant). There were chef shuffles in some of their other restaurant properties up north too, but the dust seems to have settled.

This wasn’t entirely the reason Hung is leaving. He’s moving on to pursue a new project, one that can’t really be discussed yet. “I loved helping to build Faith & Flower. It was a great experience for me as a chef,” Hung says. “But I’d like to get back to my roots, doing more refined and upscale cuisine.” (Was that a burn?)

He says he is staying in L.A. and will announce the new venture in early fall. “It’s a pretty iconic property, that’s all I can say.” What a tease.

His executive sous chef Huy Nguyen, who’s been there from the beginning, is staying on at the downtown restaurant, as is pastry chef Joshua Graves. According to Bernahl, the search for a new chef is already at hand, and he hopes to make an announcement in the next few weeks. “We like to use CLM to find great talent,” he says. And likening himself to Danny Meyer, the powerhouse restaurateur in New York, adds, “I mean, Gramercy Tavern has had a ton of great chefs go through, but it’s still Gramercy Tavern.”

Faith & Flower, sans Hung, will still be central to the upcoming Los Angeles Food & Wine event, which hits August 27-30.

When nude photographer Eleanor “Bunny” Yeager discovered Bettie Page in 1954, it was because Page, then an aspiring actress, was hoping to catch some attention in more legitimate pin-up publications (including a recent arrival called Playboy). With some direction from Hugh Hefner, a 25-year-old Yeager snapped the iconic photo of Page wearing nothing but a Santa hat—the image that appeared on the centerfold in Playboy’s January 1955 issue. In the click of a camera shutter, she had transformed Page into an international pin-up star and established herself as an accomplished photographer.

Beginning Saturday, July 25, Yeager’s work—including hand-painted photographs of Page, a variety of self-portraits, and behind-the-scenes shots from years of photo shoots—will be featured at Hollywood’s Gavlak Gallery in an exhibition titled “How I Photograph Myself.” The display will explore the subversive nature of Yeager’s work as she sought to make a name for herself as both a model and a photographer. It was that purposeful duplicity which helped her to distinguish herself from her peers—she was actively challenging the era-specific presumption that men were photographers and women were models. In doing so, she became one of the more pioneering lenswomen of her day.

Having dedicated her life to photography and modeling, not to mention publishing 30 books on the subject (one of which shares a name with the Gavlak exhibition), Yeager had an influence on a generation of artist-photographers including Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman. Arbus even went as far to call her “The world’s greatest pin-up photographer.” Get a sneak peek at some of her work in the slide show below (click the photos to enlarge).

The Gavlak Gallery (1034 N Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038) will host an opening reception for How I Photograph Myself on July 25 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The show runs through August 29.

I still have the text from Tyler Wells, then co-owner of Handsome Coffee Roasters. It was August 27, 2012. I had been asking him about setting up a taco stand in front of the coffee shop, and he finally texted and said, “Yeah, man, bring by the cart.” I asked, “When?” and he said, “Tomorrow!” So I dropped everything, went shopping that day, and started cooking.

That first day I made $110. At the time I thought, Hey, that’s not bad! Then the next week it was busier, and the week after, even busier. Eventually I had to tell chef Gary Menes, my boss at Le Comptoir, that I couldn’t help him anymore. I took a leap of faith and quit. The first time I was able to pay rent exclusively with tacos, I got choked up. That was when I knew I was onto something.

I don’t know why I was so drawn to the taco. I had been doing fine dining for years, working for some of the best chefs in the city: Walter Manzke, Gary Menes—for a short time in Paris I was with Alain Ducasse. I loved using the best ingredients, and I even loved the templelike structure and discipline. But I was burned out on being so exact and perfect. I wanted to do something more approachable, and it’s hard to find a food more approachable than a taco. You just stand in line, order it, and it comes to you. That’s how I want to present things like uni or truffles to people who’ve never tasted them, or who could never order the $45 truffle supplement. That was me for most of my life. So you know what? I’m going to throw truffles on a tortilla and charge 12 bucks. Anyone can afford $12 to taste something so unique. It’s not about wanting to make fancy tacos; it’s about making good food more accessible to the masses.

With Guerrilla, I didn’t set out to do something different; I set out to do something good. When I first told people I wanted to open the best taquería in L.A., I didn’t know what that was going to be. I just knew I wanted to make tacos better than any I’d ever had with the very best ingredients—something drilled into me by all my previous bosses. And I wanted to open something that fused my experience in gourmet restaurants, my travels, my childhood growing up in Pico Rivera, and my identity as Mexican American. For me that was the taco. It’s my ultimate creative vehicle.

Three months after revealing her true self in a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer, one month after gracing the cover of Vanity Fair, and just under two weeks since receiving an honor at this year’s ESPY’s, Caitlyn Jenner is back in the spotlight with the series I Am Cait. The eight-part documentary, premiering this Sunday, July 26 on E!, follows Jenner as she begins her new life as a transgender woman, focusing on her relationships with her family and the newfound responsibility she feels to the trans community given her high-profile opportunities. Here’s what will (and totally will not) surprise you about the premiere:

WILL—The show wants to be taken seriouslyNo, really. Despite being a show on E!—a channel whose current lineup includes one show about the spin instructors at WeHo’s Cycle House and another about two Beverly Hills doctors who are the Mr. Fix-Its of disgusting plastic surgery mishaps—I Am Cait isn’t a complete fluff-fest. The show treats Caitlyn Jenner neither as tabloid fodder nor as some kind of monumental hero. For the most part, she’s just an average woman (albeit one surrounded by a team of stylists and who gets visits from celebrities).

WON’T—The conversations are still stagedWho has a heart-to-heart with their sister while playing tennis? Strike that: who has a heart-to-heart with anyone while playing tennis? The choreographed chats are one feature of reality TV nonsense that the show doesn’t care to shake.

WILL—The first episode revolves around Caitlyn’s momPrior to the first episode of this series, Jenner had never introduced herself to her mom. This is the kind of realness the show wisely chooses to show—there’s some palpable tension as Caitlyn and her mom get to know each other.

WON’T—Mom ends up accepting CaitlynPutting the E! in Everything works out at the end! Caitlyn’s mom may have screwed up the pronouns left and right, but by the end of the show she shares her support for her daughter and graciously promises to get used to the change.

WILL—Kanye West shows up to talk about his sneakersWest doesn’t pop up all that often on the various Kardashian shows, but he makes a brief speaking cameo on I Am Cait to offer his support. He also has a bizarre conversation with Caitlyn’s sister about his shoes. It’s still unclear why that scene was included, except it’s not, because #productplacement.

WON’T—Caitlyn and Kim take a closet tourYou didn’t think Kanye showed up alone, did you? After ditching him in the living room, Kim and Caitlyn take a tour of the latter’s massive walk-in closet. Hilarity ensues—but we won’t rob you of the joy ahead of Sunday’s premiere.

Drinks with a view is all the rage right now. Upstairs at the Ace Hotel is a bonafide hot spot even when it’s cold out. Perch has steady lines for Parisian-style brunch and clubby nights near Pershing Square. And soon we’ll have a restaurant atop the U.S. Bank Tower with unparalleled views of the city. Here’s one more to add to the list, at least for the summer: The roof on 26th floor at The Ritz-Carlton at L.A. Live now offers bites and sips from WP24 on Friday and Saturday nights.

This is the first time Wolfgang Puck’s crew will serve more than just hotel guests on the roof. With a reservation, anyone can go up there between 6-10 p.m. on weekend nights for items like grilled prawns with sticky rice and red curry; house-made potato chips with toasted nori and tograshi-yuzu sour cream; red snapper ceviche; Thai chicken satays; and even American Wagyu beef sliders. Prices are around $7-$17 for food. It’s not a typical happy hour budget, but once you see the view, you’ll be pretty happy. Plus there’s live jazz. Snazzy.

Call 213-743-8824 for a table. The roof through Labor Day weekend and closes after September 5.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/munch-on-red-curry-prawns-above-the-lights-of-l-a-live/feed/0What Your Parents Really Think About the Places You Take Them When They Visithttp://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/what-your-parents-really-think-about-the-l-a-places-you-take-them-to-when-they-visit/
http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/what-your-parents-really-think-about-the-l-a-places-you-take-them-to-when-they-visit/#commentsFri, 24 Jul 2015 17:14:14 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=484479

Raise your hand if this has happened to you: your parents/siblings/friends are coming to visit you in Los Angeles and despite having a full and happy day-to-day life here, you’re not sure what to do with them when they arrive.

Thought so.

Figuring out how to provide an authentic experience that isn’t challenging for visitors who aren’t intimately familiar with this city’s quirks is a true local struggle.

I’ve faced this dilemma twice in my seven years of Angeleno-hood, and for the second time last weekend. For my parents’ most recent stay, I wanted to switch things up, focus less on tourist attractions and more on the places I find most interesting in Los Angeles.

How’d it go? It went well!

Or, to be more accurate, it went well once I let go of my need for my parents to appreciate L.A. for the same reasons I do.

No matter how much I talked up a destination’s worthiness in advance, my parents either missed the point or found a different one to embrace. In time, I’ve realized that that’s OK. We see L.A. through different glasses, and the difference in our outlooks gave me a broader perspective on my adopted city.

It might, however, be useful for you to know what to expect when you welcome your next visitor to town. Here’s a rundown of what my parents took away during their recent trip:

INTELLIGENTSIA
What I told them: It’s a very nice place with kind-of annoying people and great drinks. I may run into someone I know.What they said: We spent over $5 on a small cup of coffee and it took 20 minutes to get it.

BARNSDALL ART PARK
What I told them: It’s a hidden-in-the-open getaway with 360-degree views of the city. The grounds include a Frank Lloyd Wright house, occasional wine evenings, and great art. It’s a must-see for every design-loving out-of-towner.What they said: Why is this Egyptian-looking house on top of a hill? Who lives here?

MULHOLLAND DRIVE
What I told them: The winding street that offers you one of the most thrilling views of Los Angeles.What they said: Haven’t we already seen this in a movie?

SON OF A GUN
What I told them: This was Jon and Vinny’s new spot before they opened all those other, newer spots.What they said:How much is a chicken sandwich?

AMOEBA RECORDS
What I told them: It’s the best store for music, movies, and any other media in the world.What they said: Why do they want to take our bags? Isn’t that illegal? They can’t take our bags. This isn’t fair. It’s a bookbag! I’m not leaving it with some stranger. They could go through it.

CITY HALL
What I told them: It’s the beacon of downtown where mayor Eric Garcetti works to keep our city great. He was my city councilman when I lived in Hollywood. The courthouse is nearby, too. Grand Park is very nice and the whole area is very Metro accessible.What they said: Didn’t this used to be in a cop show?

PARAMOUNT STUDIOS
What I told them: I’ve been there a few times, for Paris Photo and The Taste LA. It’s cool.What they said: Wow, can you believe this is where television shows and movies are made? Wow. Our tour guide explained that Lucille Ball had a replica of her house from the East Coast made on the lot so that she always felt at home. Can you believe that? That’s amazing. Real history lives here.

VENICE BOARDWALK
What I told them beforehand: I’m not going there unless it’s for work.What they said: But it’s an eclectic mix of people with lots of unique shopping treasures. It doesn’t have any wood boards to make a boardwalk, though. That’s weird.

MY APARTMENT
What I told them: It’s fine.What they said: YOU’RE PAYING AS MUCH AS OUR MORTGAGE IN RENT?!?!?!

This week has been ripe with dire predictions for the future of mankind, so it is perhaps fitting that the upcoming fall movie season is dominated by gloomy dystopian scenarios, natural disasters, and survivalist tactics.

TheHunger Games series is wrapping up in November with the fourth and final installment in the franchise, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. (Speedy synopsis: In a not-so-distant future where killing is sport and society is ruled by the top one percent, Jennifer Lawrence must save the world by battling an evil dictator.) Mockingjay Part 1 was not without its problems. In many ways the movie suffered from classic narrative build-up syndrome (focusing solely on creating the right setting for the final movie), but judging by the new trailer we’re going to see an extremely gratifying end to the saga. We don’t actually see Katniss Everdeen interact with Coriolanus Snow (played by Donald Sutherland), but there’s a showdown coming for sure.

The Maze Runner was met with some skepticism when the first installment came out last year, but the newly released trailer for the sequel, The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, makes a pretty convincing argument for seeing this movie. Based on James Dashner’s YA trilogy of the same name, Maze Runner was very similar in setup to The Hunger Games, at least when it comes to the whole teenagers-marooned-in-a-mysterious-maze-where-they-must-fight-for-survival thing. The series isn’t exactly reinventing the narrative wheel, but where the first movie focused on the existentially claustrophobic setting of the maze, the sequel broadens the scope, inviting the viewer to experience the world outside as the protagonists escape their prison. Needless to say, it’s not pretty.

As a bonus we also get Aidan Gillen (aka Littlefinger) playing the part of the new villain, so if you’re thirsting for Game of Thrones this should tide you over.

La Zandunga Meat MarketManhole-size Oaxacan tlayudas are made for stacking beans, cheese, and grilled meats—like a Mexican pizza. Not quite Taco Night, but it may be better. » 11933 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A.

FILLINGS

Carnitas El MomoArrive early for confit pork parts by the pound. This is pig at its peak; all that’s left to do is toss on a few pickled jalapeños. » 2411 Fairmount St., Boyle Heights.

SalsaCan’t muster the strength (or the chopping talent) to make your own? The artisans behind your meaty fillings should have salsas to go—downtown’s Chichén Itzá
carries a few habanero sauces for heat seekers—or hit up any of the better Latino
markets near you.

GuacamoleSorry, no shortcuts here. All the store-bought stuff is icky or at least will be by dinnertime. Check out this recipe from Walter Manzke of Petty Cash—because the only real option is to make it yourself.

Even if you never read a single one of his speech bubbles, surely you’re familiar with Archie, his ginger hair, and his 60-year-long struggle to choose between Betty and Veronica. Cartoonist Tom Moore, who died of lung cancer Wednesday, July 22 in El Paso, Texas, spent more than 30 years illustrating the life and times of Archie Andrews and his gang. Despite the comics’ setting in the fictional town of Riverdale, there were many times when the characters found themselves in Los Angeles. Here are five:

“The Archies in Beverly Hills” (Archie Digest #250)February 1, 2009In this Archie timeline, the Riverdale friends form a Beatles-esque band called the Archies. Pop star Jessica Simmers invites them to Los Angeles, where Archie, Betty, Veronica et al soak in the sights and attend PG parties with other celebrities. (In a meta twist, the Archies had a real-life hit with “Sugar, Sugar,” the top-selling single of 1969 from the comic’s TV spinoff.) Later, the Archies return to play the Beverly Hill’s Crystal Ballroom.

“Mission Bound” (Betty #98)July 23, 2015Four issues earlier, the kids learn about the wonders of the Los Angeles Public Library in a storyline meant to promote literacy and the library’s real “Teen‘Scape” young adult section. In this issue, they travel west for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (so culturally relevant!), where they encounter famous authors and continue to preach the importance of reading.

“Betty at Beverly Hills High School” (Betty #184)March 1, 2010Thanks to a student exchange program, Betty ends up studying at Beverly Hills High. The school’s Evian water dispensers are a little overwhelming at first, but she adjusts beautifully. Betty even trains for the track team and hangs out on Rodeo Drive. She’s back in Riverdale by the next issue, but she’s left perma-dazzled by the glitzy lifestyle of the rich and famous: in another comic, she and Veronica jet off together for a weekend in Palm Springs.

“California Dreamin’”/“Tune in Tinseltown” (Archie & Friends #121-123, later republished as Comic Con Caper #1-3)July 9, 2008After some Scooby Doo-style hijinks in Europe, Archie and his friends arrive in the states to find a Hollywood film deal waiting for them. Studio executives fly the gang to the Catalina Comic Con, where they attend a celebrity party—where all of the celebrities are later kidnapped. Of course, Archie and co. save everybody all while getting wise to the perils of fame.

Archie Marries Betty #1 (also published as Life with Archie #1)September 1, 2010Hollywood’s only cameo is in this alternate universe series, when the sexy Cheryl Blossom calls Betty to dish about her glamorous Tinseltown life as a model and actress. When Cheryl hangs up, we’re left with an all-too-familiar plot twist: she’s just a washed up waitress.

The Los Angeles craft beer family has exploded over the past few years. And not to be outdone by beer hotspots like Torrance and the Arts District, the San Gabriel Valley has just landed one of the largest craft breweries in the country.

Petaluma-based Lagunitas Brewing Company is already the sixth largest U.S. craft brewer by volume. The company has breweries in Petaluma and Chicago. And now it plans to nearly triple its portfolio by opening up a 178,000-square-foot brewing space at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Azusa.

Lagunitas founder Tony Magee says in a blog post that the company’s original location in Petaluma is nearly maxed out when it comes to production capacity and that shipping beer to Southern California from the Chicago brewery doesn’t make any sense. There’s demand for that beer on the East Coast, and trucking it to California isn’t very environmentally responsible.

So why Azusa? Well, the reasons all point to some of the major forces crafting (ahem) the craft beer business today: Water scarcity, emerging markets and the maturation of America’s beer scene.

On water and the drought (from the blog post mentioned earlier): “Azusa is blessed to be located right at the mouth of [the San Gabriel River]. As such they are much less reliant on imported water from Northern California and the Colorado River.”

On the Mexican craft beer drinker (on a Beer Advocate forum): “Has anyone on this board ever thought about how it is that no U.S. craft brewer sells drop one in Mexico? I’ve thought about that. A lot. I believe that we will sell Lagunitas in Mexico.” Azusa, he says, sets Lagunitas up for a big push into the Mexican market.

On getting older (from the same B.A. post): “I’m 55 years old a couple of weeks ago and I’m feeling ambitious… Wouldn’t you be excited to think of your own favorite home-brew recipe being enjoyed by some bugger in Belarus… or CapeTown? It gives me goosebumps and I want more of ’em before they ring the bell.” Global expansion for Lagunitas, Magee says, starts right here in L.A. County.

Some restaurants come and go, others stay the course (for better or worse), and then there are places like Osteria La Buca. A Hollywood neighborhood staple since 2004, La Buca has gone from a 20-seat charmer with Mamma at the helm (she and son Filipo Cortivo now have Osteria Mamma a few blocks away) to an airy Cal-Ital spot where studio lunches and cozy dinners are the norm. And while every few years it seems to reinvent itself via facelifts, cocktail programs and chefs, the name has stayed the same. And once again there’s a new story to tell by way of Cameron Slaugh, the new chef shaking things up in the kitchen.

While Slaugh has a pretty impressive resume, which includes stints at Alinea in Chicago and Eleven Madison Park in New York, he grew up in rural Utah where his family raised everything from produce to poultry. That background goes hand in hand with a new farm La Buca owners Stephen Sakulsky and John Moezzi commissioned in West L.A. of all places, where they’re growing everything from squashes to tomatoes, lettuces, chilies, and more for the menu. The land, a former home that the family wanted to turn into a farm, also has an orchard and berry bushes.

“It’s a mix of things that you can and can’t really find out here at the markets,” the chef says. “I’m already planting the autumn production; definitely things like sunchokes, gourds, salsify, and cabbages.” All of this is showing up in new dishes across the board.

Landing a New York chef isn’t new for La Buca. After all, this is where Jason Neroni landed before partnering with Paul Hibler’s American Gonzo Food Corporation (Superba Snack Bar and Superba Food & Bread), and now with Bill Chait’s Sprout group (Catch & Release, The Rose). While the backbone of the menu is still country Italian cuisine with Southern California sensibility, the majority of it has changed under Slaugh’s tutelage. “In respect for our regulars that continue to come here and help keep the restaurant alive, we have some of the classic dishes they keep coming back for,” he says. “But about 80 percent is new.”

That means the handmade pastas and pizzas are still available, but with his spin, from wheat conchigale with fresh squash and tomatoes bigoli en brodo with house pancetta and poached egg. He’s added things like housemade ricotta with caramelized agave and toasted bread; salads with Buca Farm lettuces, melons and leeks; and grilled octopus with avocado, fennel and pistachio vinaigrette. The restaurant also now serves brunch on Sundays, and the menu is all Slaugh’s, things like sautéed farro with poached egg, arugula, sausage and pecorino; polenta-ricotta skillet cake with Meyer lemon jam and honey; baked eggs in spicy tomato sauce with goat cheese toast; and a pressed porchetta sandwich with poblano sauce.

Although the chef is learning how difficult it is to find great cooks in this town (“there seems to be less drive here”), a complaint that reverberates around the culinary scene, he is drawn to the amazing seasonality we have in L.A., as well as the rusticity of Italian cuisine and La Buca’s laid-back vibe. “The cooking is simple but not simplistic,” he says. “There is a lot of technique and attention to every detail in dishes, and it’s still about fundamentals and integrity. You can’t hide mistakes anywhere.”

Check out the new menus at lunch (Monday through Friday, 11:30am-2:30 p.m.), dinner (beginning at 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays), and brunch (Sundays, 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.). The bar stays open late on the weekends.

Mid-summer is the perfect time to don one of the most timeless signifiers of the season: the flower. Floral perfumes abound, but the layered notes in complicated scents can feel heavy with the heat of the summer sun. Fortunately, there are crops of beautiful, paired-down perfumes to wear instead. These scents are as clean and light as essential oils, but they’re slightly more intricate.

Le Labo’s Jasmin 17 spotlights jasmine, pairing the honeyed scent with notes of vanilla and sandalwood. It’s evocative of summer rain.A hint of lychee gives Diptyque’s Eau Rose brightness. It’s a great daytime scent, and it’s casual enough to wear on a hike. Bitter Rose, Broken Spear by D.S. & Durga features bitter rose blended with notes of larchwood, thistle, and amber. The masculine scent is heaver and more full bodied than most single-flower perfumes, but its namesake flower stays front and center.

We’ve gathered a few more standout options, including single-flower accessories, for you to spend the rest of the season in, pollen-free.

The actor best known for playing Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (and The Hobbit trilogy, but most of us are still trying to forget that happened)—not to mention the 40 years of Shakespearean stage work that led to his knighting—celebrated the release of his new film Mr. Holmes the way any L.A. baller would: By making scrambled eggs at the Chateau Marmont.

In a video posted to his Facebook page Thursday morning, McKellen explains that the recipe comes from his Stepmother Gladys and reassures us all that they are indeed the best scrambled eggs in the world.

“Live from Chateau Marmont in Hollywood,” I scramble up the best eggs in the world for my Facebook followers, to celebrate the success of my new film “Mr. Holmes”.

Using a non-stick sauce pot—like a boss—a wooden spoon, a pad of butter, and some half-and-half, he whips up a more-than-respectable plate of soft-scrambled eggs on toast. Even though the video has been viewed over 200,000 times in the past 6 hours, not everyone was impressed.

“Sir Ian is a brilliant actor and seems like a wonderful person,” said polite Facebook dissenter Paul Bonzulac. “But he did everything wrong with those eggs.”

Did Ian McKellen make the perfect Ludo-style omelet? No. Will his recipe be adapted by Alvin Cailan and added to the Eggslut menu? Probably not. Did he make an edible plate of food in a hotel room kitchen while allowing us all to melt into his regal, sage-like voice? Damn right he did.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/you-shall-break-fast-sir-ian-mckellen-scrambles-eggs-at-the-chateau-marmont/feed/0A Film About Boyle Heights Is One of the Downtown Film Festival’s Most Hyped Premieres http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/after-eight-years-in-the-making-east-l-a-interchange-will-premiere-at-the-downtown-film-festival/
http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/after-eight-years-in-the-making-east-l-a-interchange-will-premiere-at-the-downtown-film-festival/#commentsThu, 23 Jul 2015 20:22:28 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=484137East L.A. Interchange about gentrification, multiculturalism, and acceptance in one of L.A.’s most historic areas]]>

In 2007, filmmaker Betsy Kalin began working on a documentary about Boyle Heights, a Los Angeles neighborhood quick to embrace racial integration from the 1930s onward despite America’s generally discriminatory tendencies. After years in the making, the film will finally debut at the Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles this Sunday, July 26 (get tickets here). We caught up with Kalin ahead of the premiere to talk gentrification, multiculturalism, and acceptance in one of L.A.’s most historic areas.

Why is this a story that needs to be told now?What’s so funny is, we’ve been working on this for eight years, and the neighborhood has changed so much even in that short period of time. The whole film looks at external forces foisted upon the community from the 1940s—racially restrictive housing covenants, freeways, Japanese internment—and now the community is facing gentrification and displacement.

Is gentrification winning out?Boyle Heights is still Boyle Heights. It’s the same community. What drew me there is its activist history—they constantly got the short end of the stick, but the people in the community fight back. I wouldn’t say they’re fighting gentrification, but they’re fighting to keep their community.

How is the East L.A. freeway playing a role in all of this?Boyle Heights was one of the wealthiest areas in L.A. There were gorgeous, big houses and orange groves. The freeways displaced over 15,000 people, created cul-de-sacs, and trapped people in their little sections. There was a structural blockade between Boyle Heights and the rest of L.A. In some ways that was a positive thing, because so many communities that have freeways go through them across the U.S. were destroyed. You look at Detroit and Chicago and places like that, and these communities aren’t in existence anymore. I think because Cesar E. Chavez Ave. was a little farther from the freeways, people were able to have this hub that kept the community in tact.

What are you hoping to achieve with this documentary? Will viewers walk away with a need to galvanize support for the area?I hope that people get emotionally involved with the people of Boyle Heights and take away this sense of strength to go back into their own communities and fight for things they believe in and make change happen there. I want Boyle Heights to be a microcosm of the U.S.

You’ve said that Boyle Heights was one of the few neighborhoods in the history of the United States that strived to be truly multicultural. Now that it has a predominantly Latino population, how can it stick to its desegregated roots?Education. Even though it is prominently Latino, it is still a diverse community to some extent. There are Asians living there that have had the same homes for years. There’s an African-American population. So on some level it is still multicultural. But when we were first shooting, we were talking to one of our subjects and were like, “There’s this synagogue…” and he didn’t even put it together that Jewish people were living in the community. And he would walk by the Breed Street Shul all the time. So it’s just making people aware.

If you’ve ever been to places like the sublime Bardot Brasserie in Vegas, you know that restauranteur extraordinaire Michael Mina doesn’t joke when it comes to brunch. His Bourbon Steak location at the Americana at Brand in Glendale is no different, and the restaurant is rolling out even more reasons to hit up Rick Caruso’s ersatz mall/village this weekend.

For Sunday brunch, Bourbon Steak is now offering a free canapé cart for diners, with treats that change weekly. The dim sum-inspired canapé cart offer everything from Coconut Thai Curry Carrot Salad with Mint, to Egg Salad Croissant Profiteroles, to Bloody Mary Bites with olive, anchovy, tomato, and peppers. Table-side Bloody Marys (with bacon!) are available to complement the edible version of the classic cocktail.

“The goal of the canapé cart was to give the guests a chance to enjoy different tastes of food,” Chef Kyle Johnson says in a statement, “not just have an Eggs Benedict and a Bloody Mary and leave.”

As far as meals, Johnson is featuring inspired brunch entrees like Scottish Salmon with a choice of mascarpone scrambled eggs or duck fat frites, and Wood Grilled Merguez Sausage with hummus, harissa, feta, and pine nuts. Top cuts are also available for those who can tackle a wagyu before noon.

The new Vacation movie will be hitting theatres next Wednesday. The film, which is more like a sequel but is being marketed as a reboot, centers around a grown up Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) and his desire to recreate the cross country road trip to Walley World that he took as a child in 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation. The new film stars Christina Applegate as Rusty’s wife and Leslie Mann as Rusty’s sister. Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo make cameos, reprising their roles as Clark W. Griswold and his wife, Ellen.

I thought the move to recreate National Lampoon’s Vacation was sacrilege at first, but the preview had me laughing out loud. Disappointingly, Vacation was shot mainly in Georgia. In this installment, Walley World’s played by Six Flags Over Georgia.

Because National Lampoon’s Vacation is one of my all-time favorite comedies, I have done quite a bit of research on its filming locations over the years. Many of them can be found in L.A.

Glendale Dodge Chrysler Jeep, located at 900 South Brand Boulevard in Glendale (just north of Chevy Chase Drive, coincidentally) is where Clark and Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) pick up their new metallic pea Wagon Queen Family Truckster. Amazingly, the dealership still looks very much the same today as it did onscreen in 1983. The “St. Louis” street where the Griswolds encounters some troublemakers who steal their hubcaps and add some choice graffiti to the Truckster is actually the northern end of Hennesy Street on the Warner Bros. back lot. And Clark skinny-dips with Christie Brinkley at the Guesthouse International Hotel at 12500 Firestone Boulevard in Norwalk.

A screen capture from “National Lampoon’s Vacation”

The location I was most excited to visit, though, was the Griswold family home. Set in Chicago, the white clapboard and red brick residence is actually located at 2310 North Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz. Despite the addition of a fence, it still looks almost exactly as it did in National Lampoon’s Vacation.

The home in June 2009

Photograph by Lindsay Blake

I hope the new film fares well. Considering the iconic status of its predecessor, it has a lot to live up to. As the tagline on the Vacation poster sardonically asks, “What could go wrong?”

Lindsay Blake is an actress, writer, celebrity admirer and Los Angeles enthusiast who contributes to CityThink each Thursday. Her true love is filming locations, and she founded the Web site IAMNOTASTALKER in 2007 to document her vast findings on the subject. For more “stalking” fun, you can follow Lindsay on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The taco changed my life. It has changed a lot of people’s lives. Today the lines at taquerías are longer than ever, and bloggers who never grew up around Latino food are aficionados. Tacos, like hip-hop, have broken through cultural barriers. But as much as I’m the Korean taco guy, I don’t think the taco is a vehicle for everything. I don’t want us all to forget that the taco comes from somewhere. It comes from the streets, from a place where English isn’t the first language. It may not be as romantic as the Parisian crepe, but the taco has become our city’s emblem. So as a city, it’s time to create an environment for these businesses to thrive. Let’s make tacos our national treasure. To do that we first need to stop using them to clog our social media feeds and use them as a basis for change.”

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/how-not-to-be-a-taco-tool/feed/08 Ways to Have a Great Weekend in L.A.http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/8-ways-to-have-a-great-weekend-in-l-a/
http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/8-ways-to-have-a-great-weekend-in-l-a/#commentsThu, 23 Jul 2015 14:18:45 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=483231

PERFORMANCE: New Original Works FestivalThe three-week showcase spotlights ascendant local talent in the performing arts. More information (July 24-26; REDCAT)

MUSIC: DucktailsThe side project of Matt Mondanile, guitarist for the Brooklyn band Real Estate, began when he was making music in his parents’ New Jersey basement. More information (July 24; The Getty Center)

CONFABS: Roaring NightsParty with the animals and an 18-and-older crowd at an after-hours exploration of habitats. Along with live music, zookeeper chats, and drink stations, canvases will be set up around the campus should you want to paint a possum portrait. More information (July 24; L.A. Zoo)

SPORTS: Special Olympics World GamesMore than 7,000 athletes representing 177 countries descend on Los Angeles to compete for glory. The opening ceremony kicks off at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, followed by a roster of events all over town. More information (July 25-26; Various venues)

CONFABS: BookmakingKids learn how language and images interact in the art of L.A.’s Steve Roden, Alexandra Grant, and Corita Kent, whose text-filled pieces will be on view at the workshop. More information (July 25; Pasadena Museum of California Art)

MUSIC: 65-92: The Rhythm Changes but the Struggle RemainsKamasi Washington, the virtuosic saxman of L.A.’s emergent young jazz scene, performs two sets that reflect on the music of civil rights struggles, from the discord of 1965 to the uprisings of 1992. More information (July 25; California Plaza)

ART: Painting with Silver and Light: Civil War and Landscape PhotographyIn its infancy photography was a messy art form, complete with noxious chemicals and glass plates. Artist Will Dunniway’s demo of the early collodion process is followed by a talk about battlefield photographers led by rare-book and photography dealer Michael Dawson and Huntington Library photo curator Jennifer Watts. More information (July 26; The Autry)

Senate Pro Tem Kevin De Leon will introduce a new pilot program this week that will bring electric vehicle care-shares to low-income L.A. neighborhoods.

The formal announcement doesn’t happen until Friday, but we know this much: the $1.6 million pilot program comes from California cap-and-trade revenue earmarked for disadvantaged communities suffering from pollution—in other words, those situated near freeways, refineries, and the like. De Leon previously authored two bills that set aside C&P bucks for low-income communities feeling the effects of climate change.

The pilot program aims to deploy 1.5 million electric vehicles around the state by 2025, with the goal of cutting down oil consumption and carbon monoxide emissions. The program also provides money for charging stations to be set up in the participating areas.

It’s not clear which L.A. neighborhoods will be included in the pilot, but Friday’s press conference takes place in Westlake. Organizations like T.R.U.S.T. South LA and the East Los Angeles Community Corporation are expected at the event, so expect places like Boyle Heights and Watts to benefit from the program.

Three years ago the city rallied around two giant objects as they rolled down deserted streets late at night. Relive the joy of the space shuttle and the big rock on a slightly smaller scale when two Victorian cottages are shuttled around West Adams this week.

The University of Southern California is moving the pair of turn-of-the 20th Century homes to make way for a new childcare facility at the school. The first house will start to roll around midnight tonight and the second will depart 24 hours later. The public is invited to cheer on the slow-motion parade. The eight-block journey will probably take the entire night, so go and celebrate the successful relocation of these two beauties to the University Park Historic Preservation Overlay Zone where filling in vacant lots with these ancient beauties is a big win for everybody. Members of the West Adams Heritage Association will be on hand with champagne and coffee, depending on when you arrive.

Once upon a time, before the days of easy flights to Kauai or Cancun, Angelenos’ resort options were restricted to day-trip destinations like Palm Springs, Laguna Beach, and a little lake in the San Bernardino mountains called Big Bear. On-the-run outlaws, prospectors, Ursus arctos horribilis, mountain climbers, and big white buses have passed through the area’s rugged landscape, which has brushed with Hollywood glamour, too. The woodlands around Big Bear passed for Georgia in Gone With the Wind, Texas in Old Yeller, and the Ponderosa Ranch home of Hoss, Little Joe, Adam, and Pa in Bonanza.

It all began in 1841 when the irrepressible Benjamin Wilson pursued a band of Native American raiders into territory known as “Yuhaviat” by the Serrano people. Wilson, the grandfather of general George S. Patton, found the mountains to be filled with adventure and grizzly bears (big ones, apparently). When he brought a heap of pelts down from the mountains, it initiated an influx of hunters, trappers, loggers and miners. Then, in 1859, mountain man William “Grizzly Bill” Holcomb found gold, sparking a rush. Even the famed San Francisco businessman Lucky Baldwin was enticed to try his luck, building the Gold Mountain Mine in 1874. By the turn of the century the Gold Rush had slowed to a crawl; prospectors gave up and moved on. Eventually even the grizzlies became scarce—the last one was seen in 1908. As if to replace them, in came the tourists. Resorts began opening around the lake late in the 19th century, taking out ads in Los Angeles newspapers.

In 1908, hard-shelled John Heyser drove a steam-powered automobile 101 miles to Big Bear on a bet, and he completed the loop in a nifty 13 hours and 7 minutes. This lead to the founding of the Auto Stage Company by Kirk Phillips in 1912, which converted big white trucks into charter buses and made Big Bear the first SoCal mountain recreation center. About this time a new dam was completed, tripling the amount of water in the lake, and the Pan Hot Springs Hotel drew tourists by the busload. Moviemakers were among the droves of weekenders who travelled into clean air, and they loved it—stars like Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers and even Cecil B. DeMille took up residence there. The area popped up in films during the early teens. 1920s Big Bear stars in the silent film The Last of the Mohicans.

Eventually, winter sports became the area’s big draw—six feet of powder blanketed the Snow Summit ski resort some years. And in a return to its sporting roots, Big Bear has played host to boxing names like Oscar De La Hoya, Mike Tyson, and Sugar Shane Mosley, who came to train in the thin air.

Los Angeles Public Library map librarian Glen Creason shares a map from the Central Library’s collection at CityThink each week.

Back in the old days, pre-cocktail renaissance, it wasn’t unheard of to find a bar’s drink creator working behind the stick. Cocktail programs didn’t get nearly the same amount of attention as they do now and were pretty informal endeavors with no one person responsible for the entire thing but rather a team of bartenders. There were no cocktail consultants or “director of drinks.”

But nowadays that’s not the case. The beverage director is usually responsible for a slew of programs, i.e. Julian Cox, and therefore rarely, if ever, found behind an actual bar anymore. For most, running a bar doesn’t leave much time for working service. So it’s a treat when you do encounter the original drink maker shaking and stirring his/her own creations because you can see them in action, find out the backstory of your favorites, or just experience how the cocktail is meant to taste. Not to say their bar crew isn’t skilled, but it’s always awesome to get it from the OG bartender.

Fortunately there are still some bar program creators out there who pull shifts. The ones whose names you’ve often seen lauded by reviewers as well as cocktail enthusiasts. Whether it’s because they want to keep in contact with their guests or they just love making cocktails, here’s when you can find them at their respective bars.

Bestiain Downtown is now double-teamed by Cocktail Director Jeremy Simpson and Bar Director Nick Krok. For their cocktail program they draw their inspiration (and ingredients) straight from Chef Ori Menashe’s kitchen. As to why they like to work the bar, Simpson says he enjoys the drink making process from top to bottom as well as interacting with the guests. “And hopefully have an opportunity to educate them on something they have no idea about is rewarding, to say the least,” he says. “The exchange of ideas and conversation behind a bar is really what got us all into this business in the first place, anyway.” Krok agrees, There’s no better feeling than hearing ‘Thank you, that was the best experience I’ve had in a long time, or ever,’ and knowing that I was an integral part not only in the preparation, but in the execution of that guest’s experience.” Schedule:Both Monday-Tuesday, Simpson Thursday-Friday, Krok Wednesday and Saturday

Daniel Sabo at Ace Hotel‘s Upstairs and L.A. Chapter bars has a favorite time for working: “After lunch, but before the evening rush. It’s my favorite time and allows me to spend more time with my team. I do, on occasion, work an evening shift, but that’s rare these days with the baby and all.” Schedule:Monday through Friday 3 to 7 p.m.

Even though Jason Eisner at Gracias Madrehas a set schedule on paper he puts in more time than that creating all those fun, inventive cocktails. “Studying, getting in the lab and being playful, developing my palate, creating cocktail recipes, learning about product, learning how culinary mechanisms work, learning about history, geography, culture…the list goes on and on. It’s not a job. It’s a way of life and I LOVE what I do,” he says. Schedule:Monday-Thursday 9am-6pm, Friday-Saturday 3 p.m.-11 p.m.

Gabriella Mlynarczyk (Cadet, Ink) now spends a majority of her time creating food-friendly libations at Birch in Hollywood. She’s always worked behind the stick at her former gigs at Ink and Cadet. Like most of the other OG bartenders she enjoys the connections with her guests but also the excitement. “I get off on the adrenaline rush of being slammed behind the bar. It’s like a marathon and I compete with myself to get to the finish line as fast and efficiently as possible.” Schedule:Thursday-Monday, 2-5 p.m. prep, 6-11 p.m. service.

You can find Redbird‘s Tobin Shea, who created the program with Julian Cox, at the bar…well, all the time. “Generally I work a five 50 week (five 10-hour days) but if someone needs it off, a sixth day week will creep into my life.” Good thing he loves it. “Not to give the corny line ‘find something you love, and you’ll never work another day’ but it holds true with me.”

“L.A. is a really private city,” author Alexis Landau muses in the garden of her West L.A. home as her children Lucia and Levi zip by on scooters. “Being an L.A. writer is really solitary and isolating in some ways, as opposed to a place like New York. But I actually think this is a great place to live and write because you are not constantly confronted with other writers and what they’re doing. There’s less of that inherent competition.”

This dichotomy of isolation and community characterizes Landau’s debut novel The Empire of the Senses, a sweeping family epic set in post-World War I Berlin published by Pantheon in March. In The Empire of the Senses, the Pearlmutter family’s internal dramas mirror the turbulent cultural landscape of 1920s Germany. Jewish father Lev, who escaped Russian pogroms as a child, fights for Germany in World War I to assert his patriotism while his wife Josephine submits to Freudian analysis in an attempt to understand her dissatisfaction. As young adults, their children Franz and Vicki seek meaningful identities amidst the debauchery of Weimar Berlin. “It was pretty disconcerting and daunting to write about another city, particularly one as massive and historic as Berlin, while I was living here,” Landau recalls about the process of crafting her novel. “But it was also an escape. I often felt that I had this weird secret life in late 1920s Berlin that only a few people knew about.”

If the author’s focus on private life in public space feels personal, that’s because it is. The child of Jungian analysts, Landau was born on the Westside and has lived here most of her life, departing for a few years to attend Vassar College, complete an MFA at Emerson, and work in publishing in London. “Growing up, I felt everything was discordant here, but now I can see its beauty, and own the disparateness of the city, which has helped me to identify with it,” she explains. “I was commuting to Harvard Westlake on the 405 when I was sixteen. There was intense pressure to succeed. It wasn’t very social because people were working so much.”

This sense of isolation led Landau to seek out a writerly community upon returning to Los Angeles and working for several years at the late great Brentwood bookstore Dutton’s. “Like everything in L.A., it’s harder to find your community here. You do have to work harder for those kinds of connections, but once they fall into place, they are real.” Today, Landau has a PhD from USC and a busy life balancing writing, teaching, and parenting her two children with her husband, a film producer raised in Europe, and strengthening her bond to her home city has influenced the direction of her work: “My next book is set in L.A., in the late 1940s, so I do feel I am getting incrementally closer to home.”

The new novel takes place in the exile community that included composer Arnold Schoenberg, playwright Bertolt Brecht, and novelist Lion Feuchtwanger. Although many of the exiles were Jews, Landau explains, “Jewishness was not really the binding factor. They fled Europe because they were anti-Fascist and horrified with the conditions there, stricken by how the world of artistic freedom and expression had come to a grinding halt with Hitler. All these writers and musicians came here and had to make a living in Hollywood. Some of them felt that it was paradise, others believed it to be a vapid, inane landscape.” This period-specific tension between self and place is where Landau’s interest lies. “Both political refugees and Americans from other states came to Los Angeles with the idea that here you can really rewrite yourself and your narrative, whether you are Jewish, a refugee, or just a guy from Iowa who wants to be a director.”

The idea of L.A. as a place of reinvention and transformation resonates with Landau, who now teaches writing at USC. “I felt like an exile in this city growing up,” she recalls as she makes dinner for Levi and Lucia, who have discarded their scooters to play with blocks. “I was obsessed with foreign films from an early age, convinced that ‘real life’ was happening elsewhere, that Los Angeles was all glitter and surface, that there was no history here.” The sense of unreality that drove Landau from the city as a younger woman has ebbed, she explains: “My view of Los Angeles has really changed.”

“There are two distinct versions of L.A., and now that I’m an adult they’re blending together. When I moved back here when I was 27, it felt distinct, different. Like I was going to redefine it. But now that I have children, I am doing some of the same things with them that I did as a child,” she says, watching her kids tuck into their dinners. “Growing up here, I didn’t really appreciate how awesome L.A. is. Now I think, wow, it’s so diverse. Even the topography is amazing. It took me a long time to love it, because growing up, you don’t know anything else.”

Roy Choi is putting the sun-drenched patio and massive rum selection at Sunny Spot to good weekday use with a pair of deals that launched this week: Slider Monday and Taco Tuesday.

Staying true to his restaurant’s Caribbean fusion theme—just traveling west a few hundred miles—Choi says he’s taking inspiration from the island-adjacent Yucatan for his new lineup of $2 tacos. He’s serving up five varieties: spicy ground beef, pork belly with avocado, lamb and pineapple guisado, garlic shrimp, and a vegetarian mashed plantain mofongo taco.

And when we say “he’s serving up,” we mean the man, the myth, the legend himself: Choi was working the line last night, personally loading crispy animal bits into tortillas at Sunny Spot’s first Taco Tuesday of many to come.

He said on Twitter, “I never did a Taco Tuesday Before in my life. I do a taco everyday. This is FUN.”

Though it might lack the alliterative flair and name recognition of Taco Tuesday, Slider Monday is still coming in hot with the deals. For $4 each—or three for $10, which you can’t afford not to do—you have your choice of a cheeseburger with tomato jam, tempura shrimp with avocado mash, pork belly with pineapple slaw, calamari with gremolata, and pork rib with cilantro and a dried pepper sauce all served on mini brioche buns.

If you’re not hungry and you’re just sad about it being early in the work week, Sunny Spot has you covered there too: You can now drown your sorrows in $5 beers, $6 wines, and $8 cocktails all day Monday and Tuesday.

It’s unclear which killjoys have kept the Muppets off television airwaves since 1981, but who cares because hate doesn’t win: the heroes over at ABC have picked up a brand new series set to premiere September 22—all based on one 10-minute pilot.

The pitch video debuted at this year’s Comic-Con and received a rare standing ovation from a room full of Henson fanatics. Thankfully it is now available to us all. Filmed documentary-style, the footage sets the stage for what we can expect from creators Bill Prady, Bob Kushell and Randall Einhorn. “The whole show takes place behind the scenes at UpLate With Miss Piggy,” Kushell said at the Comic-Con panel, which sounds like we’re in for a Muppety version of The Larry Sanders Show. “The trick of the show, if it works, is to show the Muppets in our world. There’s no barrier between the world they’re in and the world we’re in,” Prady added. What’s more, the series will be shot right here in L.A. Here’s your first look.

Del Pero laughs. It’s a February afternoon in Marina del Rey, and there’s a lunchtime line out the door at his sandwich shop. The fast-casual mogul is telling me about the recent investment he made to create a smokehouse in El Segundo, where executive chef of research and development Hunter Pritchett has been experimenting with all kinds of low-and-slow preparations.

I visit that smokehouse a couple months later, on the day that happens to be 4/20 (wocka wocka), and del Pero amends his statement to say that developing the meat on his smoked turkey tinga torta actually cost more than $200,000. But he’s in a good mood about it.

The turkey sandwich has done well. Plus, now that his smokehouse is regularly making new meats for his sandwiches, he can cost-average his considerable expenses.

Brooklyn pitmaster Billy Durney of Red Hook’s Hometown barbecue joint spent a few weeks helping del Pero set up the smokehouse and created an eight-hour pulled pork that Mendocino Farms has served on a sandwich with housemade pickles. Pritchett is working on short ribs that sit overnight in a salt-and-pepper rub and brown sugar before they’re smoked.

Mendocino Farms is putting the finishing touches on its smoked chicken and street corn torta.

And I visit the smokehouse again in mid-July to try Mendocino Farms’ forthcoming smoked chicken and street corn torta, which will debut on August 17 and be on menus until November.

It’s a glorious sandwich, with Petaluma Farms’ single-ranch chicken that’s been brined overnight and smoked for about three hours with California red oak supplied by South Bay Firewood in Hawthorne. The meat reminds me of the barbecue I grew up eating in Texas. There’s real smoke here.

There’s also a lovely balance of sweetness, heat, and acid from the sweet corn spread. Brentwood corn from Santa Cruz is grilled, and then Pritchett adds cotija cheese, lime, chipotle, and a little red onion and cilantro. There’s also a simple rajas with poblano and yellow onion. The sandwich is then topped with pickled watermelon radishes, candied Fresno chiles, and shaved romaine. This is for a sandwich chain, but this is no doubt chef-driven food. Pritchett, who was the highly regarded executive chef at Denver’s Luca d’Italia, worked at Son of a Gun and Waterloo & City before joining Mendocino Farms.

“This is basically your smoked chicken you get from your roadside smokehouse,” says del Pero, who despises the grocery-store, deli-case chicken that’s processed with liquid smoke and looks unnaturally pink. “I’ve always been a fan of roadhouse barbecue joints. But it’s the idea that we could be a place that can expose people to real artisan, hardwood-smoked meats without being stuck to the confines of a barbecue joint that excites me. You have a chicken that’s ready to go to into a torta that doesn’t have any barbecue reference at all except that this is real smoked meat.”

Del Pero has eaten all over the country to do research for Mendocino Farms. The pastrami at Brooklyn’s Mile End was an a-ha moment that made him realize smoking meats is a truly transformative process.

“I’ve enjoyed pastrami, but I’ve never had it this good,” del Pero says.

Del Pero’s also hit countless old-school barbecue spots. And as his tortas illustrate, “we actually get a lot of inspiration from cutting-edge taquerias.” (Mendocino Farms’ smoked turkey sandwich, which was on the menu for a few months, featured a sweet onion/chipotle ragout with diced avocado, chili aioli, Oaxacan and Cotija cheeses, pickled red onions, shredded romaine lettuce, and chopped cilantro.) He recently returned from eating his way through Chicago and San Francisco, visiting restaurants and sampling meat. Pritchett remembers a cold November day, “36 degrees and windy,” when he waited in line outside Austin’s legendary Franklin Barbecue for three hours while del Pero, who admits that he “was in a warm car,” hit three other restaurants.

“I’m still shivering,” Pritchett says.

Mendocino Farms, whose Peruvian steak torta has been a bestseller, has long known that great meat is good business. So del Pero just went to San Diego to talk to the crew behind Salt & Cleaver about creating some sausages that Mendocino Farms plans to finish in its smokehouse.

As for Pritchett’s in-development short ribs, which I also taste, the crust is excellent. Now the chef and del Pero are working out how they’ll get the meat to keep the right amount of fat.

“We’ve just got to get it moister,” del Pero says. “The smoke can blow it out. Low and slow is good to a point. We think we can nail this by the winter. This is what we do, this is my job.”

Mendocino Farms plans to open its eleventh sandwich shop in El Segundo in early September and its twelfth location in Santa Monica in late November.

Poor hard-shell taco – despised target of millions of Mexicans, beloved by fewer and fewer gabachos every year as your soft-taco and burrito brethren ascend. Who could possibly love your bland, prefabricated form, your stale encasement crumbling beneath ungodly amounts of grease-soaked meat and a kaleidoscopic blizzard of red tomatoes, green lettuce, and yellow cheese? What future can you possible have in a world where you’re as much a relic of Old California as Leo Carrillo?

Southern Californians may disrespect you, but I know that it was you, with your salty exoskeleton who blazed the trail for Mexican food in America through your disciples, Taco Bell, Del Taco, and Old El Paso. When made fresh, you are the Light: a glittering burst of straw-colored shards, a holy trinity of crunch, sabor, and spice. You are the reason for Cactus Cooler, El Coyote Mexican Café, and the 2 a.m. drive-thru.

Like me, a Mexican American, you are often derided by our cousins down south as inauthentic or poncho. But the very first tacos to enter America were crackling tacos dorados, or “golden tacos.” Which means you are more native to this land than any of your flaccid competitors. In your name I eat at Tito’s. Amen.

The Hollywoodland Homeowners Association wants to limit access to the city’s most iconic tourist attraction by extending street parking privileges to certain residents while restricting hours for most visitors. These NIMBYs need to remember that the “backyard” in “not in my backyard” doesn’t include a globally recognized landmark that’s been there since 1923. Unless you moved to the nabe 100 years ago, you knew what you were getting yourself into. Let everyone enjoy it.

Before he became known throughout East L.A. as the face of Salsa Sinaloa, Hualterio Merino worked as a chef at the Van Nuys Courthouse cafeteria. Whenever he put out his homemade habanero hot sauce, the court clerks and police officers lapped it up. “They finally convinced me I needed to sell the stuff,” says Merino. So he bottled a few cases in his garage and hit the streets, going from taco truck to mariscos stand in his white van. “At first people said, ‘No, we have too many salsas,’ but once they tried it, they changed their minds.” As customers began to ask for Sinaloa by name, the orders rolled in. Today Merino distributes his all-natural hot sauce to restaurants and tiendas as far away as Hawaii. (Right now his product is available only wholesale.) But Merino has more than peppers to thank for his grassroots success. Online, Salsa Sinaloa has followers who share pictures of the orange splash dousing everything from tamales to Top Ramen. “I thank God, of course,” says Merino, “but Instagram, too.”

When A Night With Janis Joplin first played the Pasadena Playhouse in 2013, one patron wasn’t pleased to find Mary Bridget Davies playing the rock icon. “A woman came out at intermission and demanded her money back,” says Davies. “This is a night with Janis Joplin, this is Mary Bridget Davies. Where’s Janis Joplin?” Theatergoers won’t be asking that question when the show returns tonight to the Pasadena Playhouse as Davies reprises the role that earned her a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical.

“She’s been dead for 40 years,” Davies laughs. “Where have you been? She was age appropriate. That made me laugh for days.”

Davies has been associated with Joplin for ten years by appearing first in Love, Janis. She was then invited to front Big Brother and the Holding Company (Joplin’s band) before embarking on A Night With Janis Joplin. “I’m not a Janis Joplin impersonator,” she says. “It’s just a character that’s near and dear to me. Being Janis, it’s just been something I love doing. It hasn’t gotten stale. I’ve been lucky. The exposure of being on Broadway got me connected with a great agency and management. I’m recording a new album of my own original stuff in Nashville and writing some killer songs. It’s all finally coming together. It’s falling into place.”

Joplin’s singing style was so unique, how has her style influenced Davies’ singing of her own material? “It’s informed me and my craft,” she reveals, “but it’s not the same thing. Maybe people could say any woman that is strong that can pull grit out of her voice, she’s got a Janis or Bonnie Raitt thing. We have to constantly label and make comparisons in that way. I love her, but she already existed. There doesn’t need to be another.”

Ten years performing as Joplin, Davies does feel that she has certain perspectives in common with her. “I do share a lot of her sentiments,” she offers. “For her it was terribly difficult being a woman in an all-male band. The climate is less unforgiving now. You’re the den mother and the wrangler and the front person and the man. She took a lot of heat for that. She was one of the first women to do that. It’s still a machine. I for one, have no intention of being a pop star. That was never in the cards for me because there’s so much self-compromise. You have to live it. It has to be that authenticity or no one’s buying it.”

When Joplin spoke of soul, she once said “You know why we’re stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don’t let themselves feel things.” Does Davies agree? “I think it can be expounded upon. At the time she was on the money. I think people are lot more free with their emotions. It’s not viewed as a weakness as it might have been by her parents’ generation. You go to a funeral and there’s some sniffling and people are sad. I’ve had to go to wakes at a Methodist Baptist Church and people are throwing themselves on the casket. That’s so much better for you to grieve and that’s what Janis did. Culturally, 50 years ago, white people didn’t participate. It was Stepford. It was far more true then, but I understand what she was saying.”

Davies, who maintains an active and entertaining Twitter account, tweeted that she’d love to play Simone in Can-Can. “When Janis is done and my tour is satisfied, I’d love to be in a traditional musical. I went to see On the Town. I wish I was a guy so I could be one of the guys in the show. I would love to be in a real Broadway musical and wear a gown with sequins that weights 35 pounds. When your career starts paying off you become a contender. I would be so diminished if I couldn’t perform. That’s, when I came into this world, what I was ordained to do.”

But while L.A. is flush with a.m. burritos, we’re surprisingly short on the Tex-Mex morning stalwart. “The main difference is the flour tortilla,” says San Antonio native Josef Centeno, who whips up versions of his favorite childhood treat at his downtown restaurant and cantina, Bar Amá. “They have to be made fresh to order, soft and chewy.” It’s a matter of size, too. “The breakfast taco is the original small plate,” says Centeno. “It’s anywhere from three to five bites, which concentrates the whole experience, and you’re meant to try more than one.”

Valdez agrees. “I can easily eat three breakfast tacos and walk out the door.” At HomeState that could include the Trinity (scrambled eggs, bacon, potato, and cheese), the Pecos (brisket and egg), and the Frio (refried beans and bacon). “You’ve got your protein, your carbs, and your veggies,” says Valdez. “It’s a complete, balanced breakfast.”

Just One Eye is a concept boutique and fine art gallery that was dreamed up and co-founded by Paola Russo, the former fashion director at Maxfield. The 5,000-square-foot Hollywood shop is located at the former headquarters of Howard Hughes’ aviation empire. There, Russo and her silent partners are dedicated to fusing the worlds of fine art and fashion. The company has collaborated with a handful of revered artists and organizations, including Venice artist Ed Rushca, new-pop artist Nate Lowman, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

They sell pieces for the home, men’s and women’s clothing, art objects, jewelry, and antiques. Everything in the store has been meticulously selected. Antiquated, psychedelic crystal paperweights by Saint Louis sit next to new pieces by The Row and cases of pavé diamond jewelry. You’ll stumble upon things like a Damient Hirst X Just One Eye X The Row backpack, made of Nile crocodile and on sale for $55,000. The shop has an extensive art book collection, including hard-to-find editions like the printed retrospective of Donald Judd’s furniture, which goes for $3,500. There’s even a Just One Eye exclusive survival kit complete with a cashmere blanket and a night vision monocle.

Starting this Friday, Just One Eye is offering marked down women’s and men’s apparel, accessories, footwear, jewelry, and more. Our tip: Make your way to the manor this week. Highly-coveted items from Proenza Schouler, Valentino, Chloé, Yohji Yamamoto, Pierre Hardy, and Thomas Wylde are sure to go quickly.

The sale will run for two weeks, and the store is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

Want to stay in, but eat like you’re out? Here, chef and writer Heather Platt shares recipes inspired by L.A.’s hottest restaurant dishes. We say “inspired by,” as these creations are Platt’s own and have been adapted for the home cook, using easy-to-access ingredients and techniques you can pull off in just about any kitchen—yes, even yours.

The Real Thing:Have you ever been mesmerized by a sandwich? Between every bite, you can’t help but stare at the bread-wedged food in your hands, entranced, contemplating its deliciousness. Among the variety of pastries, tartines, crepes, baguettes and myriad other delights at downtown L.A.’s new French Boulangerie, Pitchoun, you’ll find the Pan Bagnat. This traditional Niçoise sandwich is served on their house made bread which is drizzled on both sides with olive oil and vinegar (pan-bagnat translates to “bathed/wet bread”) and layered with the classic ingredients: tuna, raw vegetables, whole anchovies and olives. It is, essentially, a Salade Niçoise on a roll. And though it seems so simple, the combination of flavors is revelatory; a dish whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Hack:This simplicity is exactly what makes it a great home recipe. In this version I chop the anchovies and olives and combine them with the vinaigrette to amp up its flavor, which gets slathered all over the bread. Aside from boiling the eggs and whisking the vinaigrette, the recipe is mostly just the fun of assembling the colorful components. I encourage you to make these sandwiches to bring on a picnic, to a summer concert, or just for lunch at home. It’s okay, stare all you want!

Bring a small saucepan filled with water to a boil over high heat. When the water is rapidly boiling, use tongs to carefully place the eggs in the water. Turn off the heat and cover. Set a kitchen timer for 14 minutes. When the timer goes off, use the tongs to remove the eggs from the water. They will be hard boiled.

In a small bowl, whisk together the shallot, garlic, vinegar and mustard powder. In a slow steady stream, add the olive oil while continuing to whisk. Stir in the anchovies and olives. Season to taste with salt and pepper and set aside.

Thinly slice the celery and radishes. If you have a mandoline, this is the perfect time to use it. If not, a knife will do.

Slather the bottom piece of bread with the olive-anchovy vinaigrette. Place the tomatoes on top in a single layer, followed by the egg slices and tuna. Scatter the sliced radishes and celery on top of the tuna and sprinkle with the chopped green onions. Slather the top piece of bread with the vinaigrette and serve.

We Angelenos tend to think of Orange County as a hotbed of freeway-adjacent chain restaurants with all-day margarita happy hours, sprawling gated communities that cater to the nouveau riche, and 10 seasons of Real Housewives slamming white wine and getting belligerent on camera. But there’s one cultural bastion that the O.C. just might be able to lord over L.A.: The county fair.

The O.C. Fair predates the L.A. County Fair by 32 years, and, as such, has had the time to develop a rich lineup of agricultural exhibits, artisanal markets, and—most importantly—a menu of deep-fried, bacon-wrapped calorie bombs that leave 1.3-million annual visitors scrambling for their wallets.

If you want to get your hands on the good stuff this year, make the trek down to L.A.’s sister to the south between July 17 and August 16 and check out these nine insane, fair-exclusive delicacies.

Caviar-Topped TwinkieTo celebrate the O.C. Fair’s 125th anniversary, Chicken Charlie’s, the undisputed king of all things deep-fried, will be selling its caviar-topped Twinkie for $125. But, before you decry this as the ultimate display of American opulence, know that 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

Bacon-Wrapped Pork BellyIn what definitely should have been named “Baconception,” Biggy’s—a booth known for its massive meat portions—is wrapping pork belly cubes in a half pound of bacon and serving the whole thing on a stick.

Fried CoffeeIn keeping with the breakfast theme, the masterminds behind the Bacon A-Fair booth are stuffing dough balls full of Starbucks espresso grounds and chocolate chips, then deep-frying the caffeine-infused confection in a mixture of oil and bacon fat.

Fried Corn on the CobThe folks from the Wild Hog booth are taking the term “corn dog” literally. A full cob of corn is jammed on a stick, dunked in cornmeal batter, and given a bath in hot oil.

Krispy Kreme Triple CheeseburgerChicken Charlie is tripling down on the donut-burger craze in a gut-busting way.

Fried PizzaShockingly enough, this is the first time fried pizza has reared its greasy head at the Orange County fair. The Apple Fries booth is dredging a slice of pepperoni pizza in egg wash, dusting it in flour, then flash-frying it for that extra crunch.

Fried Apple RingsSince the O.C. Fair is also about featuring the great produce and local farmers of the area, it only makes sense that the folks at the Chuckwagon booth would take a beautifully cultivated apple, batter it, fry it, and dust it with cinnamon sugar.

Fried Slim Fast BarWhat’s more ironic than deep-frying fresh fruit? Deep-frying a product whose only purpose is to help people lose weight. Bravo, Chicken Charlie, bravo.

]]>http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/nine-o-c-fair-delicacies-youll-have-to-eat-to-believe/feed/0An Exhibition Five Years in the Making Tracks the West ’s Role in the Civil Warhttp://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/new-exhibition-five-years-making-tracks-west%e2%80%89s-role-civil-war/
http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/new-exhibition-five-years-making-tracks-west%e2%80%89s-role-civil-war/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 20:52:36 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=412800

When John C. Fremont was trying to map a route through the Rockies in 1842, he couldn’t raise an American flag; the land wasn’t part of the United States yet. So his wife hacked Old Glory, working in a bald eagle clutching a Native American peace pipe. The vestige (above) is among the nearly 300 objects featured in the Autry National Center’s exhibition Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West, a project five years in the making. “One of our goals,” says curator Carolyn Brucken, “was to bring together these two transformative events—western expansion and the Civil War—and show them as interconnected.” The show runs through January 3, 2016.

The California Highway Patrol is trying to quell an uproar from drivers forced to flee Friday’s Cajon Pass fire and leave their cars on the 15 freeway; many were later hit with exorbitant towing fees, some as high as $1,600.

The Los Angeles Times recounts the tale of Laura Caro, who followed CHP orders to abandon her SUV and flee, “pushing her (80-year-old) mom in a wheelchair through a smoky maze of stopped cars and frightened people.”When Caro later retrieved her Ford Escape (ironic) from Hesperia’s Gonzalez Tow, she was handed a $1,600 invoice.

Others reported similar treatment from the company, contracted by CHP, with fees over $1,000. People like Caro and Mariela Munoz (who paid $1,095 after pleading down a $1,621 bill) took to the media to decry the price gouging. The CHP got involved and is worked to obtain refunds for the drivers, who all complied with the law by abandoning their vehicles and running to safety in the hills of San Bernardino County.

After talking with CHP officials, Gonzalez Tow decided to donate their services as a “community service.”

]]>http://www.lamag.com/driver/following-freeway-fire-drivers-fuming-over-towing-fees/feed/0Police Discovered More Than 1200 Guns and Two Tons of Ammo in a Pacific Palisades Home Over the Weekendhttp://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/police-discovered-more-than-1200-guns-and-two-tons-of-ammo-in-a-pacific-palisades-home-over-the-weekend/
http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/police-discovered-more-than-1200-guns-and-two-tons-of-ammo-in-a-pacific-palisades-home-over-the-weekend/#commentsTue, 21 Jul 2015 19:31:11 +0000http://www.lamag.com/?p=483012

Officers who responded to a call reporting a possible deceased person in the back of a car in the 1700 block of Palisades Drive on Friday evening discovered a body—and then some; A visit to the deceased man’s residence on the same street turned up more than 1200 firearms and a quantity of ammunition estimated at two tons. To put that figure into perspective, 746 firearms were netted by the LAPD’s gun buyback program in May. The recovered collection, which included riffles and shotguns, was removed from the residence and booked with the police department’s property division. Now the Detective Bureau’s Gun Detail is looking into the legality of each firearm.

Officials have yet to name the male adult who died, but Robbery-Homicide Division detective Chris Gable, who’s working the case, spoke to us about finding the “very large” cache of weapons.

He says he’s only ever seen such a large collection of guns and ammo in the military, that firearms were discovered in most rooms in the Pacific Palisades house, and that it took around 10 hours for the property to be removed—by hand. Despite the True Detective-esque twist to his weekend plans, he remained nonplussed: “I wouldn’t say I was surprised,” he says, “It was a discovery.”

My recent trip to Mexico was a whirlwind of traditional Mexican food from three different states, mezcal, tequila, and a chance to check in on the home town eats of one of my favorite food trucks—Tamales Elena. Elena Irra and her talented family of home cooks (one even worked under chef John Sedlar at Rivera and made it up to the hot line!) come from the Costa Chica area in Guerrero, a state that has been in the news in recent years for horrible acts of cartel and state-sponsored violence.

I was there working on a documentary called Masa Revolution, and we were there to film the regional style of tamales served at the Tamales Elena truck in Watts, a truck I first wrote about on my blog, Street Gourmet LA, back in 2008. I was able to convince our director, crew and their local liaisons to go into Chilpancingo, after it was clear we weren’t able to head to the Costa Chica, and not only did we find our tamales at the Chilpancingo market, but a rich variety of delicious dishes like picaditas (giant masa boats), delicious atoles (hot masa-based drinks), chilate (cacao agua fresca), barbacoa and so much more.

The local economy in Watts makes it difficult for Elena and her daughters to keep the more expensive banana leaf tamales made with fresh masa (the regular tamales at their stand are made from Maseca so they can deliver them to the community for $1), but if you call Teresa in advance you’ll have some of the best tamales you’ve ever tasted. The Guerrerans tie their tamales into flat rectangles filled with chicken or pork in either a red or green salsa, deeply flavored with chiles and Mexican spices—the tamales are then steamed in large pots over a mesquite fire for that extra special flavor. They’re moist and delicious and well worth the drive for a taste of traditional Guerreran tamales, just like you’d find at a market in Chilpancingo or in Guerrero’s Costa Chica.

I need to remember that Pascal Baudar is not trying to kill me—even though the plant he’s offering looks exactly like hemlock, the shiny green sprout that spelled curtains for Socrates.

“So I can eat this?” I ask. “Yes,” he says. “Trust me.”

We are in a scruffy, sun-baked clearing within earshot of the Foothill Freeway, north of Burbank. All morning I’ve been munching on shoots and branches I assumed only rabbits and squirrels ate, or maybe druids: mugwort, yerba santa, miner’s lettuce. Now Baudar wants me to try wild chervil, an invasive species, which, like Baudar himself, is native to Europe. With its pointy, fernlike leaves, it is a ringer for deadly Conium maculatum, except chervil has infinitesimal hairs. I take a bite and wait for convulsions.

Baudar, a lean, soft-spoken 54-year-old with gray hair, sticks out his lower lip and gives a distinctly Gallic shrug. As a professional forager and master preserver, he knows he stands alone in a Los Angeles food scene where “local” and “sustainable” can mean your cherries are trucked in from Fresno or beyond. Growing up in the Belgian countryside, Baudar consumed what flourished in the gardens and forests around him. After 30 years here, he still relies largely on whatever he snips, cans, dries, smokes, ferments, steams, and pickles.

Camouflage cargo pants and steely gaze notwithstanding, Baudar is no bunker-dwelling, off-the-grid commando. He lives in the Verdugo Mountains neighborhood of Shadow Hills with his wife, Mia Wasilevich, a vivacious wild-foods chef and photographer. The shelves in the couple’s fragrant kitchen are arrayed as neatly as the ones at Gelson’s, though their mason jars are marked with handwritten labels like cicada skin sheds. For the past hour we have been knocking around in the field not far from their home, stuffing Ziploc bags with elderberries and black mustard flowers for chef Ludo Lefebvre, because that’s what Baudar does for a living: He is the go-to weed dealer (of a sort) for L.A.’s culinary elite, including Curtis Stone, Josiah Citrin, and cocktail wizard Matt Biancaniello. He is up and out by seven most mornings, collecting cactus buds or vacuuming harvester ants (a favorite of Lefebvre’s). When she’s not at his side, Wasilevich, a former entertainment publicist, experiments with flavor profiles and designs menus—all to serve the highest aspirations of the city’s most enterprising gourmands. “The majority of chefs use 30 wild ingredients maximum,” Baudar says. “We deal with 456.”

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Los Angeles is a city built for foraging, and not just because magnificent vegetation grows everywhere virtually year-round. Unlike New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, which foist their charms on you by dint of sheer density, L.A. demands some rummaging around. Disagree with me if you want, but while this town may be great to live in, it can be a terrible place to visit. Steadfast hunting and gathering is what makes the sun shine.

It took me two years to get my head around Los Angeles after relocating from Manhattan in the mid-’90s, and becoming situated required serious exploring. It wasn’t just finding the strip-mall sushi bar that would leave New York friends quivering with envy. I started devoting whole Saturdays to tracking down the most authentic Brazilian moqueca or the perfect public paddle tennis court. Two decades later the city continues to conjure unexpected magic. The traffic navigation app Waze routinely directs me through neighborhoods I didn’t know existed: View Park, Harvard Heights, Colfax Meadows. Just this month I looked closer at a house I’d passed hundreds of times near me in Culver City and noticed a discreet historic property plaque that reads “Louis Armstrong residence”. Satchmo! Such not-knowingness is, in fact, the allure of Los Angeles. Even Baudar and Wasilevich, who can stroll through a field and distinguish their shaggy parasol mushrooms from their man-on-horsebacks, cannot pretend to master L.A. because L.A. cannot be mastered. “We keep unearthing amazing new things,” Wasilevich says. “We recently found cardoon, an ancient artichoke from the Roman Empire, growing wild here. I mean, who knew?”

Psychology professor Thomas Hills at the University of Warwick in England believes the primal search instinct is a “ubiquitous requirement of life.” Animals forage for food, territory, and sexual partners, which, come to think of it, drive most human behavior here, too. For a laboratory study published in the journal Psychological Science, Hills tracked subjects as they “foraged” in a video game for hidden caches of food and water, noting that certain volunteers took time to carefully assess their surroundings while others missed their quarry because they were rushing. The plodders turned out to be more successful in a follow-up word puzzle, suggesting that foraging styles reveal something significant about problem solving and, perhaps, ambition and achievement as well. If nothing else, that tenacity can open doors. At a bar called Lock & Key in Koreatown, getting into the back-room cocktail lounge means determining which of the more than 50 knobs on a wall actually work (hint: Try the gold one on the far right).

For those whose persistence needs polishing, Baudar leads outdoor skills workshops that essentially transform a patch of weeds into a field of possibilities. He had been working as a freelance graphic designer and photographer since arriving here in 1986. A survivalist course he took during the Y2K bug scare is what turned his attention to grazing full-time. He met Wasilevich online, and they spent their first date nettle hunting (“We keep a couple of the nettle wontons we made in our freezer,” Wasilevich says). Baudar estimates that 20 to 30 percent of their diet comes from foraged fare, and his expertise—he’s taken more than 100 classes on plant identification and wild gastronomy—qualifies him as an authority on practically anything that takes root.

Baudar’s is a timeless pursuit. For centuries only the poor scrounged in tangled thickets for their sustenance. Today found food is the hallmark of one of the most fussed-over chefs in the world: Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen. My meal there two summers ago began with a pot of edible nasturtium flowers in a dirtlike emulsion of forest herbs, followed by deep-fried moss. It ended 24 courses later with swirly crowns of chocolate inlaid with sea buckthorn marshmallow. Cooks everywhere try to replicate Redzepi’s taste of wilderness, though most come off as mere scavengers.

Baudar hates the idea that he’s part of some global foraging trend. “I got the Noma cookbook and immediately gave it to my daughter,” he says. (Baudar has two adult kids from a previous marriage.) The flavor of the greens he grabs, not the fashion, is what energizes him. “With certain plants, I can taste them before I pick them,” he says. “I’m not spiritual at all, but eating this way has an almost divine quality for me.” He’s working on a book of his own—400-plus pages, lushly photographed and due out in 2016—to spread the word about the simple pleasures that can be derived from exploring your surroundings.

A couple of days after our outing, Baudar and Wasilevich host a “forest and field” dinner for an appreciative group of 25, each of whom pays $250 to feast on dishes like wild thistle uni and acorn-morel “truffles” sealed in ravioli. For dessert Wasilevich serves frozen mastic yogurt sprinkled with candied ants and lerps in a cricket-flour cone. The presentation is artful. Nothing tastes like chicken. Wasilevich sends everyone home with stylish tins of smoked wild black sage cocoa with honey powder.

Hiking with my wife and 11-year-old son the next morning on our usual path across the bluffs in Playa del Rey, I try impressing them with some Baudarian know-how. It’s a clear morning, and Los Angeles stretches in panorama from the marina to the Hollywood sign, but I’m interested in the food at our feet. Desert thistle has a stem you can snack on if you remove the thorns. The flavor is like sweet celery. Wild chamomile has the tangy tartness of pineapple. I point out juniper berries and giant fennel and a hillside of rosemary. A week earlier this same landscape was a wasteland to me. Suddenly it’s a supermarket. But my middle schooler looks bored, which is why I grab a heaping handful of black mustard weed, strip the yellow flowers into a clump in my hand, and wait for the wonder in his eyes as I start chewing.

1. CaCao MexicatessenThe neighborhood favorite offers gourmet tacos for $1.85 each. Try the carne asada seasoned with San Felipe sea salt or the cochinita pibil, with one of the local brews on tap. » 1576 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock.

2. ClutchOscar Hermosillo uses wood-burning grills to cook the meats and veggies for “Superrrr Taco Tuesdays.” Fillings rotate, but not the price: From 4 to 11, one taco costs $3.25. Equally “superrrr” are the ceviches, Mexi-fries, and live music. » 427 Lincoln Blvd., Venice, 310-396-8749.

3. La CuevitaFrom 10 to midnight, this spiffed-up former dive on the Eastside turns into a taquería. Head to the back patio for free (!) tacos served with house-made salsas. Margaritas are $5. » 5922 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park.

5. Tacos BajaMissed the week’s official taco day? There’s always Wednesday, when this East L.A. fish shack offers tacos de pescado for 99 cents and shrimp tacos for $1.50. Trips to the well-stocked salsa bar are gratis. » Various locations.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that you don’t mess with Mexican food. Too many prior attempts have been smothered in sour cream and neon shards of cheeselike product. Today, though, a group of L.A. chefs is toying with the style in a way that isn’t just good; it’s respectful of tradition. Call it Alta California cuisine.

“Alta California is rooted in Los Angeles but heavily influenced by Mexican cuisine,” says Wes Avila. The pedigreed chef behind the roving modernist taco operation Guerrilla Tacos has been known to serve such Cali fillings as celery root, foie gras, and even basturma—a nod to the region’s Armenian population.

It’s a genre that allows Mexican American chefs to tell their stories on the plate, reflecting a California dialect without tromping on the classics. At his Bell gastropub Corazón y Miel, Eduardo Ruiz applies the techniques he learned in the kitchens of acclaimed restaurants like Animal to the foods he grew up eating with his Mexican- Salvadoran family. The result is an ambitious menu featuring such dishes as wild boar chilaquiles and headcheese tacos with house-pickled vegetables. “We let the seasons dictate what we cook with,” says Ruiz.

But the movement is about more than haute taco fillings. As much as these chefs’ taste memories include tamales at Christmas and birría on birthdays, they also share a sense of nostalgia for the comfort foods of this country. So you’ll find cubes of bologna with mayo piled on tortillas at Ray Garcia’s B.S. Taqueria and french fries soaked in mole at Diaz’s Bizarra Capital. That’s true pocho gourmet—and it’s delicious.

For me, growing up in L.A. during the 1960s, “Taco Night” was a cherished family ritual. My brother and I would happily construct meals from a big pot of burger meat flavored with Lawry’s faintly garlicky, cumin-laced Taco Spices & Seasonings, which we stuffed into crackly fried tortilla shells. Uninitiated friends sometimes needed some cajoling to try “Spanish food,” as Mexican cooking was frequently referred to in certain zip codes. But no one was surprised when their mothers later called us for the recipe.

We never imagined then how deeply the contents of that little white packet—despite its inauthenticity—would help transform a Mexican blue-collar snack into comfort food for millions of Americans. The ingredient’s origins date to 1915, when brothers-in-law Lawrence L. Frank and Theodore Van de Kamp parlayed a $200 investment into an international food and restaurant empire. But it was the phenomenal success of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, launched in 1938 at the family’s Prime Rib restaurant on La Cienega, that kicked off a line of products that capitalized on the evolving appetites of the era—from Hawaiian and jerk chicken marinades to, in 1967, the taco seasoning mix.

I now thoroughly appreciate the softness of stone-ground organic corn tortillas and the searing snap of bhut jolokia chile-laced salsa, but for its contribution to my palate and the developing tastes of a nation, Lawry’s Taco Spices & Seasonings merits a place of honor in our collective pantry.

During breaks between album recording and touring in 2002, brother and sister Sean and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek started a musical residency with an acoustic/bluegrass vibe at the original Largo on Fairfax, inviting friends to join them on stage. Turns out they have very talented friends. A tradition—beloved by both the audience and the players—sprang forth: The Watkins Family Hour.

For the audience, beyond the fabulous musicianship, the anticipation before the show is part of the fun. Who will show up? Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench is always at the piano if not on tour. John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin once appeared, playing mandolin on a bluegrass version of “Going to California” with Jim Keltner (Dylan, Lennon, Harrison, Clapton) sitting in on drums. On any given night you may see Jackson Browne, Fiona Apple, Elvis Costello’s drummer Pete Thomas, Jon Brion, actor John C. Reilly, alt-country duo Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, or talented friends from the bluegrass world.

For the players, you can tell by the way they smile at each other, and the ease of song choice, that it’s a refreshing break from the regular concert schedule. They’re getting to do something they all did when starting out—just hang out and jam with friends.

The next progression of this community of musicians is to record an album together, and the stars and schedules finally aligned. On the Watkins Family Hour’s eponymous debut album, out July 24, Sara and Sean are joined by Fiona Apple and Benmont Tench as well as stellar L.A. players Don Heffington on drums, Greg Leisz on pedal steel, and Sebastian Steinberg on bass for a diverse album of covers. Just about everyone takes a turn on lead vocals—including Sara on a new take on the Fleetwood Mac song “Steal Your Heart Away,” Sean reinterpreting Bob Dylan’s “Going Going Gone,” and Apple singing “Where I Ought To Be,” originally performed by Skeeter Davis. Expect a few classics by Roger Miller, Gordon Lightfoot, and Harlan Howard as well.

The collective will be taking the show on the road for a unique tour—because these kids don’t only have talented friends in Los Angeles. They have friends everywhere. They have been very thoughtful about where they are performing so different people can join them on stage in each place. You almost wish you had time in your life to follow them around like a Deadhead. If you don’t, make sure to hit their stop right here in L.A. on Thursday, August 13 at 8:30 p.m. at—where else?—Largo at the Coronet.

It’s kind of like The Bourne Trilogy meets The Big Lebowski. At least judging by the new trailer for Nima Nourizadeh’s upcoming Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart-helmed action comedy American Ultra. The movie, which in addition to Eisenberg and Stewart also features Topher Grace (The 70’s Show), Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights, Nashville) and Bill Pullman, is centered around a young stoner (played by Eisenberg) who after being “activated” gradually realizes that he is a highly trained government assassin. The only problem is he doesn’t actually want to be an assassin (after dispatching two killers with a spoon, Eisenberg turns to his girlfriend played by Stewart for comfort, saying “I have a lot of anxiety about this.”)

Eisenberg is perfect for the part of a neurotic stoner caught up in a massive government conspiracy. His character could very well be The Dude of the millennial generation. Check out the trailer below.

Model/television host/British Vogue contributing editor Alexa Chung is at it again. This Thursday she’s launching her second collaborative womenswear collection with AG Jeans this Thursday.

Chung’s design sensibility is heavily influenced by the undone California aesthetic, and by quintessential French icons like Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin and Francoise Hardy.

In her design work, Chung aims to make improved versions of classic pieces that she’s unable to find in vintage stores (think A-line skirts, suede-and-lace shorts, corduroy flares, overalls, and boxy jackets). Her first AG collection, which sold out immediately upon release, was sewn solely from denim. The new line will be denim-heavy, too, but it’ll also incorporate suede, chambray, broken twill, French terry, cashmere, and merino wool. Chung says, “The first collection was very focused and stripped back, I challenged myself to create an essential denim wardrobe. With the second collection it was more about exploring where else we could take it.” As with the first collection, Chung designed the second line right here in L.A.

Items in the 20-piece collection range in price from $98 to $1,248. Snap them up online and in AG stores around L.A. (the Beverly Hills store opens at 10 a.m.) on Thursday.

Boulevard is like your favorite Midwest transplant friend: You can take him/her to the opera on Saturday and a cornhole tournament on Sunday. He/she is sophisticated yet accessible; complicated but friendly. Everyone loves that friend. And now there’s more of the beer version of that friend to love.

That’s because Boulevard Brewing is in the midst of a major L.A. expansion. The Kansas City-based brewery (makers of Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale and The Sixth Glass quad) has dropped bottles in SoCal for the past few years. But for the first time ever, Boulevard is available on tap at finer beer bars in Los Angeles. And to celebrate the expansion, Boulevard is holding a series of events in Los Angeles, including a pop-up pub on the Santa Monica Pier for the next two Sundays (1- 5 pm).

“We want people to get a hands-on, immersive experience with Boulevard,” says Ian Hendrickson, Los Angeles market manager for the brewery. That means tastings of Boulevard’s sours and saisons, but also newly launched beers like a sessionable IPA called Pop Up and a hoppy wheat beer called 80 Acre. Beer will, of course, headline the backyard-bbq-esque pop up party. But Boulevard is also bringing musical acts and party games (cornhole!) to the Pier.

“We picked Sundays because it’s the day for hanging out with friends and family, listening to music and drinking beer,” says Hendrickson. Boulevard just wants you to do all those things with them for the next few Sundays.